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Amazon.com Review
Explaining what William McNeill called The Rise of the West has become the central problem in the study of global history. In Guns, Germs, and Steel Jared Diamond presents the biologist's answer: geography, demography, and ecological happenstance. Diamond evenhandedly reviews human history on every continent since the Ice Age at a rate that emphasizes only the broadest movements of peoples and ideas. Yet his survey is binocular: one eye has the rather distant vision of the evolutionary biologist, while the other eye--and his heart--belongs to the people of New Guinea, where he has done field work for more than 30 years.

From Library Journal
Most of this work deals with non-Europeans, but Diamond's thesis sheds light on why Western civilization became hegemonic: "History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples' environments, not because of biological differences among peoples themselves." Those who domesticated plants and animals early got a head start on developing writing, government, technology, weapons of war, and immunity to deadly germs. (LJ 2/15/97)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
MacArthur fellow and UCLA evolutionary biologist Diamond (The Third Chimpanzee, 1992, etc.) takes as his theme no less than the rise of human civilizations. On the whole this is an impressive achievement, with nods to the historians, anthropologists, and others who have laid the groundwork. Diamond tells us that the impetus for the book came from a native New Guinea friend, Yali, who asked him, ``Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?'' The long and short of it, says Diamond, is biogeography. It just so happened that 13,000 years ago, with the ending of the last Ice Age, there was an area of the world better endowed with the flora and fauna that would lead to the take-off toward civilization: that valley of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers we now call the Fertile Crescent. There were found the wild stocks that became domesticated crops of wheat and barley. Flax was available for the development of cloth. There was an abundance of large mammals that could be domesticated: sheep, goats, cattle. Once agriculture is born and animals domesticated, a kind of positive feedback drives the growth toward civilization. People settle down; food surpluses can be stored so population grows. And with it comes a division of labor, the rise of an elite class, the codification of rules, and language. It happened, too, in China, and later in Mesoamerica. But the New World was not nearly as abundant in the good stuff. And like Africa, it is oriented North and South, resulting in different climates, which make the diffusion of agriculture and animals problematic. While you have heard many of these arguments before, Diamond has brought them together convincingly. The prose is not brilliant and there are apologies and redundancies that we could do without. But a fair answer to Yali's question this surely is, and gratifyingly, it makes clear that race has nothing to do with who does or does not develop cargo. (Book- of-the-Month Club/History Book Club/Quality Paperback Book Club selection) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Customer Reviews

Evil white men make the world a better place for everyone
This poor pampered professor while struggling at his work strolling along a beach in New Guinea is posed the question as to why Eurasian cultures have succeeded with technological developments but others haven't. IN over 300 pages he struggles to present an answer that could be presented in one sentence.

Its their BRAINS - they are wired differently

This is not racist. Its clear there are many physiological differences amongst various races. Eurasians for whatever reason are compelled to invent technology. One could certainly argue that Africans have a superior rhythm center in their brain.
The fact of the matter is the laws of physics are not relative. They work the same for everyone - nothing is stopping a non Eurasian from inventing something new based upon the fundamental and consistent laws of physics.

Like most professors he is woefully out of touch with the common person. All he need to is spend an hour in a gear head shop to understand the driving force in the Eurasian mind to tinker with technology. Of course then you cant sell a book - I returned mine immediately and asked for a refund - RUBBISH

Fascinating but repetitive
I won't give a synopsis of the book as there are plenty of other good reviews that cover that. I'll just say I found this book to have a fascinating and compelling argument for why history has gone the way it has. I did not find it to be racist or even biased as the author goes to great lengths to explain his every viewpoint and provides plenty of valid reasons against any kind of bias.

The biggest flaw of the book, in my mind at least, is that it is terribly repetitive. Diamond repeats the same points and conclusions many times. It gets to the point where you feel that entire pages could have been cut out and the book would have lost nothing. Aside from that however, it is an entertaining and informative read.

European Advantages
Professor Diamond takes up a very difficult question that spans centuries. He sets out to figure out why the Europeans were able to succeed not only in their enviornment, but control throughout the world.

Geography is something Diamond finds as a major factor. Geographic luck was able to determine that type of crops, and the conditions.

Diamond concludes that once the societies discovered how to produce enough food for themselves, then some of the other citizens were able to use their free time to advance other areas. This created specialists which resulted in the innovations of Guns and Steel. The germ advantage was because the Europeans lived with pigs.

Domestic animals (Diamond finds 14 thorughout history) most of them centered in Europe gave the major advantage against disease.

Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel is an outstanding and interesting book to read.