Guns, Germs, and Steel

Guns, Germs, and Steel – Jared Diamond

Why did history unfold so differently on different continents? Why were Europeans able to conquer the Americas, Africa and Australia, rather than the other way around?

In Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, Jared Diamond, a scientist with expertise in physiology, evolutionary biology and geography, sets out to answer a question once posed to him by a friend in New Guinea: why do some peoples have so much more cargo, so much more wealth and technology, than others? Diamond rejects explanations based on supposed differences between peoples, arguing instead that the answer lies in geography and environment.

He shows how the availability of domesticable plants and animals gave some regions a head start in farming, which in turn allowed larger, denser populations, specialization, writing, political organization and technological innovation. The east-west orientation of Eurasia helped crops, animals and ideas spread more easily than across the north-south axes of the Americas and Africa. And close contact with domesticated animals exposed Eurasian societies to diseases to which they developed resistance, diseases that later devastated peoples with no such exposure.

Spanning thirteen thousand years of human history, the book combines insights from archaeology, biology, linguistics and history into a sweeping narrative.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction, Guns, Germs, and Steel is an ambitious, thought-provoking and widely discussed work, essential for anyone interested in why the world looks the way it does today.