Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize. In this "artful, informative, and delightful" (William H. McNeill, New York Review of Books) book, Jared Diamond convincingly argues that geographical and environmental factors shaped the modern world. Societies that had had a head start in food production advanced beyond the hunter-gatherer stage, and then developed religion --as well as nasty germs and potent weapons of war --and adventured on sea and land to conquer and decimate preliterate cultures. A major advance in our understanding of human societies, Guns, Germs, and Steel chronicles the way that the modern world came to be and stunningly dismantles racially based theories of human history. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science, the Rhone-Poulenc Prize, and the Commonwealth club of California's Gold Medal.

“An epochal work. Diamond has written a summary of human history that can be accounted, for the time being, as Darwinian in its authority.”
-- Thomas M. Disch, The New Leader

”Jared Diamond has written a book of remarkable scope . . . one of the most important and readable works on the human past published in recent years."
-- Colin Renfrew, Nature

”No scientist brings more experience from the laboratory and field, none thinks more deeply about social issues or addresses them with greater clarity, than Jared Diamond as illustrated by Guns, Germs, and Steel. In this remarkably readable book he shows how history and biology can enrich one another to produce a deeper understanding of the human condition.
-- Edward O. Wilson, Pellegrino University Professor, Harvard University

”Serious, groundbreaking biological studies of human history only seem to come along once every generation or so.… Now [Guns, Germs, and Steel] must be added to their select number.… Diamond meshes technological mastery with historical sweep, anecdotal delight with broad conceptual vision, and command of sources with creative leaps. No finer work of its kind has been published this year, or for many past.”
-- Martin Sieff, Washington Times

Jared Diamond, professor of physiology at the UCLA School of Medicine, is the author of the best-selling and award-winning The Third Chimpanzee. He has published over 200 articles in Discover, Natural History, Nature, and Geo magazines