Guns, Germs, and Steel

The Fates of Human Societies

By: Jared Diamond

Narrated by: Grover Gardner

Length: 5 hrs and 58 mins

Publisher's summary

Pulitzer Prize Winner, General Nonfiction, 1998

In this groundbreaking work, evolutionary biologist Jared Diamond stunningly dismantles racially based theories of human history by revealing the environmental factors actually responsible for history's broadest patterns. It is a story that spans 13,000 years of human history, beginning when Stone Age hunter-gatherers constituted the entire human population. Guns, Germs, and Steel is a world history that really is a history of all the world's peoples, a unified narrative of human life.

©1997 Jared Diamond (P)2001 HighBridge Company

Critic reviews

"The scope and explanatory power of this book are astounding." (The New Yorker)

"Guns, Germs, and Steel is an artful, informative, and delightful book....There is nothing like a radically new angle of vision for bringing out unsuspected dimensions of a subject." (The New York Review of Books)

Often referred to

So I thought I’d give this a listen, especially as it is relatively short. I have a hard copy and quickly realized this is an abbreviated version of the print version. It is a survey of anthropology and relevant archaeology or biology supporting the author’s perspective. The narration is good.

Diamond sadly misses the obvious

Though feeling good about Diamond's agreement to some of the principles of my book, "The Evolution Diet," I was feeling fairly unimpressed throughout "Guns, Germs, and Steel." The title, seemingly influenced by more appropriately named books by Marvin Harris like "Cannibals and Kings," and "Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches," attempts to clump together things that wouldn't normally be clumped together. In this case, it doesn't really work- some are reasons for why certain cultures thrived, but another is a result. This inconsistency indicates what becomes clear throughout the book, Diamond really doesn't have a strong point.

Sure, Diamond shows how certain foods allowed for the rapid growth of population that was needed for advanced civilizations and comes up with insightful reasons for success like wide East-West expansion in Eurasia, but not in the Americas and Africa. However, Diamond misses the single-most important factor in why some cultures advanced and others didn't: trade. Sure he grazes over the idea and pretty much offers the proof when he shows why Australian peoples failed to thrive despite having enough natural resources. Trade explains why the multicultural and highly populated Eurasian peoples excelled and the others didn't. The proof is seen in the capitals of advanced civilizations, which, throughout history were located at the center of trade routes (the Fertile Crescent, Egypt, Greece, Rome, Arabia, then France, Holland, and England, and eventually America).

Another irksome tendency in "Guns" is Diamond's racial labeling, which is common elsewhere, but brought to the forefront in this book, which focuses on the differences between races.

Overall, "Guns," reveals a fairly insightful look at the history of humans and how cultures got to their respective levels of advancement, but misses the most obvious reason for it throughout. Because of this, Diamond squanders a great opportunity.

a bit repetitive

In this book, the author makes a (lengthy) argument for his main thesis, namely an explanation for why the European culture at the end of the Middle Ages (and later) appeared "superior" in some ways over many other cultures such as eg the Native Americans or peoples in Africa or Australia.
I won't tell you what his explanation is though because you should read the book for that :)
The writing is easy to follow and logical and the conclusion is convincing. It is overall entertaining and at times somewhat boring.
One keeps wondering why the author needs so many pages for something that could be explained on a few.
Despite of that, it is overall worthwhile reading and it is also a famous book so good to have it in your library.

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"Instead, it might very well be that once the civilizational process is begun, there emerges a feedback effect, which by making the more intelligent in each generation more fit for reproduction, gradually increases the overall cognitive ability of the peoples inhabiting the evolving civilisations. Being smart in civilization is beneficial for your chances of reproducing yourself, and so the smarties get more numerous. Mr. Diamond doesn't see this."
Our intelligence evolved in pre-civilized societies. In civilizations, it does not require intelligence to reproduce. In today's world, those who are uneducated and living in poverty are the ones reproducing.

survival of the germy

Lucky latitudes allowing development of crops and invention swaps, domesticable critters living and sharing germs with their their owners and the societies that developed, armed with steel, guns, greed plus the sanctity of their religion; what chance did indigenous peoples have? Not much as it turned out. I first read Mr Diamonds Pulitzer Prize winning tome back in the `90s. His premise was brilliant and makes so much sense as in retrospect, so many brilliant premises do - but Mr Diamond, beats his reader over the head with a lot of peat repeat. Hey I thank him for teaching me and these many years later, wanted to review the book. Audible`s 6 hour version is just right. Thank you Mr Diamond and thank you Audible!!

Published Thesis - Interesting but repetitive

What did you like best about Guns, Germs, and Steel? What did you like least?

This book is really Dr. Diamond's doctoral thesis and is read as such. It is an interesting topic but very repetitive in the material that is covered. The topic period is a little earlier than my usual reading covering prehistoric and neolithic era civilization achievements or milestones. For example, Dr. Diamond constantly refers back to the domestication of crops and animals and does a good job of highlighting why some geographic regions developed faster/slower than others (e.g. East/West vs. North/South migration) whereas he spends less time moving beyond prehistory and into more tangible historical periods. In addition there is only a small section of the book that really details the Guns and Germs section of the thesis, both topically as well as historically, and I found that to be the more interesting as it really combines all of the theoretical aspects of Dr. Diamonds thesis arguments.

Would you be willing to try another book from Jared Diamond? Why or why not?

I would be willing to read another book by Jared Diamond as I found the material to be interesting it's just the facts and the way the "storyline" are presented that needs to be improved.

Did Grover Gardner do a good job differentiating all the characters? How?

The reader, Grover Gardner, did a good job reading this rather dry material. After all he was just reading a thesis.

Could you see Guns, Germs, and Steel being made into a movie or a TV series? Who should the stars be?

No.

Prefer abridged version

I started with the unabridged version. Stopped after 3 hours when I realized the same concept would be repeated constantly. This version got to the point much more quickly. It still flowed very well and I can’t imagine having to sit through the longer version.
The concepts of the book are excellent and well researched with data to back up hypothesis.

Informative but dense

This is an impressive and ambitious project. The highly knowledgeable Diamond attempts to tackle a timeless and seemingly unwinnable argument with academic rigor and persuasive reasoning. The debate is made all the more interesting by the presentation and rebuttal of popular (and heavily misguided) answers to the subject matter. No doubt that you will come out smarter than you came into this read.

Nevertheless, this is by no means an easy read and more often than not, one feels that geography or ancient history majors are compulsory prerequisites for this read. This is severly intensified - to the point of unfollowable - in audible format (in this respect, Gardner's performance is as good as can be done in such rough terrain).

Narrator put me to sleep

First off, let me say the book itself is great and you should definitely check it out in some form.

That said, it’s a fairly dense book. Diamond touches on biology, geography, ecology, anthropology and more. Hearing this read to you in the driest, dustiest, most monotonous lecture-esque voice possible can be ROUGH. I feel like I would have received approximately 20% more value from this audiobook if the narrator had just a little zest, or at least a pulse.

Stuff you didn’t know

I thought the book delivered interesting information that a person wouldn’t normally track down. Received a nice lesson.