Guns, Germs and Steel

The Fate of Human Societies

By: Jared Diamond

Narrated by: Doug Ordunio

Length: 16 hrs and 20 mins

Publisher's summary

Pulitzer Prize, General Nonfiction, 1998

Guns, Germs and Steel examines the rise of civilization and the issues its development has raised throughout history.

Having done field work in New Guinea for more than 30 years, Jared Diamond presents the geographical and ecological factors that have shaped the modern world. From the viewpoint of an evolutionary biologist, he highlights the broadest movements both literal and conceptual on every continent since the Ice Age, and examines societal advances such as writing, religion, government, and technology. Diamond also dissects racial theories of global history, and the resulting work—Guns, Germs and Steel—is a major contribution to our understanding the evolution of human societies.

©1997 Jared Diamond (P)2011 Random House

Phenomenal

Amazing work by Jared Diamond. Highly recommend for any readers who desire to further educate themselves on the progress of humanity, the concepts of race and culture, and how our cultures and current world have developed.

theory's debunked through deeper research

while the historical analysis is considerable, the emphasis lacks the overarching elements that other historians have used to debunk this book's conclusions.

This book deserves better!

It's a brilliant book, the author has a very ambitious and all spanning theory about human history and evolution. However the voice performance is so flat I'm quite sure I missed nearly half of the book. This needs an update!

Why Them and Not Us? Why Us and not Them?

This book tries to explain the factors that contribute to the rise of civilizations. It is special in that it does not overly focus on one civilization but instead attempts to look across civilizations to try to find the underlying factors (if there are any) that explain why one society dominates over another. As a computer engineer, I found this book to be satisfying in its explanation and was surprised at how much of a factor germs played in the way our globe had progressed over the years. It has been said that the world belongs to the microscopic. This book will explain why that is not as crazy as it sounds.

Perfect if this is your cup of tea

I loved the topic so I enjoyed the listen. But it's long and you may feel like in class.
There's a few mention of dates that may confuse some listeners but overall the book is easy to understand and enjoyable.

The writer gives each topic its own time so if you don't like the botanical stuff then you may be more interested on the language part at the end fir example.

The book is fantastic but the narration is not.

The narrator reads in a consistent robotic melodic tone that is disconnected from the content, making it very hard to follow the material . This tonal reading also breaks sentence structure , nuance and emphasis making it very monotonous and tiring to follow. Highly do not recommend this narrator .

lots of data

this book had a lot of interesting information in it. very hard to stay focused on though.

Great look into the rise if western civilization.

I thought the book did a great job of filling gaps that were not covered in my high school and college history courses as to why western European society ended up being the most dominant in the modern world.

And this is why the world is the way it is.

Just marvelous how this book presents its ideas. The arguments made in this book can be judged critically, which is what the author did, he presented the historical evidence and inferred the argument from it. The information stated in this book is quite important in the understanding of the evolution of human society and civilization.

A Grand Overview for History Buffs

Of course, as an overview, there are going to be key moments in history that are not mentioned here. However, Diamond is great at addressing this from the beginning, and so because he does not boast to be explaining everything we need to know about this subject matter, readers/listeners are able to more readily accept his claims. This is a great starting point for those interested in geography-based history.

Diamond has a secure grasp on the biological processes relevant to his discussions, such as disease transmission and ecological dispersion. This balanced worldview comes from his birdwatcher-mother upbringing and earlier endeavors in medical school. This work opened my eyes to how important environmental conditions are to the development of human societies.

This is a definite read for any global history buffs; specific enough for scholars yet also conversational enough for the layman. The narration was for the most part on par, except for the moments when you could tell Ordunio was turning pages in the recording studio or when there was a clear brake in the tone of voice indicative of different recording sessions. I would recommend this to others.