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Guns, Germs, and Steel
- The Fates of Human Societies
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 5 hrs and 58 mins
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Guns, Germs, and Steel
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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.
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)
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Excellent histgory and ecology
- By Eugene Gallagher on 09-26-20
By: William Cronon
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1491
- New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
- By: Charles C. Mann
- Narrated by: Darrell Dennis
- Length: 16 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 3,723
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 3,202
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 3,188
Traditionally, Americans learned in school that the ancestors of the people who inhabited the Western Hemisphere at the time of Columbus' landing had crossed the Bering Strait 12,000 years ago; existed mainly in small nomadic bands; and lived so lightly on the land that the Americas were, for all practical purposes, still a vast wilderness. But as Charles C. Mann now makes clear, archaeologists and anthropologists have spent the last 30 years proving these and many other long-held assumptions wrong.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Exposes Non-Academic Audience to The Debate Between Ideas of Pre-Colombian America's
- By Christopher on 01-19-17
By: Charles C. Mann
-
Unbound
- How Eight Technologies Made Us Human, Transformed Society, and Brought Our World to the Brink
- By: Richard L. Currier
- Narrated by: Noah Michael Levine
- Length: 10 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 242
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 214
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 213
Although we usually think of technology as something unique to modern times, our ancestors began to create the first technologies millions of years ago in the form of prehistoric tools and weapons. Over time, eight key technologies gradually freed us from the limitations of our animal origins.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Good facts, not much else
- By Joel B. Gordon on 10-30-16
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Dark Emu
- Black Seeds: Agriculture or Accident?
- By: Bruce Pascoe
- Narrated by: Bruce Pascoe
- Length: 5 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 94
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 81
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 81
Dark Emu argues for a reconsideration of the 'hunter-gatherer' tag for pre-colonial Aboriginal Australians and attempts to rebut the colonial myths that have worked to justify dispossession. Accomplished author Bruce Pascoe provides compelling evidence from the diaries of early explorers that suggests that systems of food production and land management have been understated in modern retellings of Aboriginal history, and that a new look at Australia's past is required.
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5 out of 5 stars
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One of the best books ever!!!!
- By Matt Powers on 05-07-18
By: Bruce Pascoe
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Ancestral Journeys
- The Peopling of Europe from the First Venturers to the Vikings (Revised and Updated Edition)
- By: Jean Manco
- Narrated by: Corrie James
- Length: 10 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 85
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 75
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 74
This paradigm-shifting book paints a spirited portrait of a restless people that challenges our established ways of looking at Europe's past. The story is more complex than at first believed, with new evidence suggesting that the European gene pool was stirred vigorously multiple times. Genetic clues are also enhancing our understanding of European mobility in epochs with written records, including the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons, the spread of the Slavs, and the adventures of the Vikings.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Needs pictures.
- By Ray on 11-21-20
By: Jean Manco
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Before the Dawn
- Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors
- By: Nicholas Wade
- Narrated by: Alan Sklar
- Length: 12 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 929
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 519
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 520
Just in the last three years a flood of new scientific findings, driven by revelations discovered in the human genome, has provided compelling new answers to many long-standing mysteries about our most ancient ancestors, the people who first evolved in Africa and then went on to colonize the whole world. Nicholas Wade weaves this host of news-making findings together for the first time into an intriguing new history of the human story before the dawn of civilization.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Amazing information
- By Albert on 06-15-07
By: Nicholas Wade
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Pandora's Seed
- The Unforeseen Cost of Civilization
- By: Spencer Wells
- Narrated by: Spencer Wells
- Length: 6 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 168
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 68
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 69
This new book by Spencer Wells, the internationally known geneticist, anthropologist, author, and director of the Genographic Project, focuses on the seminal event in human history: mankind's decision to become farmers rather than hunter-gatherers.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Short and unfocused, but often quite interesting.
- By Alan on 06-23-10
By: Spencer Wells
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The Future of Life
- By: Edward O. Wilson
- Narrated by: Ed Begley Jr.
- Length: 7 hrs and 21 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 224
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 94
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 94
Today we understand that our world is infinitely richer than was ever previously guessed. Yet it is so ravaged by human activity that half its species could be gone by the end of the century. These two contrasting truths - unexpected magnificence and underestimated peril - have become compellingly clear during the past two decades of research on biological diversity. In his dazzlingly intelligent book, Wilson describes the treasures of the natural world we are about to lose forever and how we can save them.
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4 out of 5 stars
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A scientifically-grounded case for the environment
- By Lucas on 01-24-10
By: Edward O. Wilson
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Bison and People on the North American Great Plains
- A Deep Environmental History
- By: Geoff Cunfer, Bill Waiser
- Narrated by: Chuck Buell
- Length: 11 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall5 out of 5 stars 23
-
Performance5 out of 5 stars 21
-
Story5 out of 5 stars 21
This audiobook explores the deep past and examines the latest knowledge on bison anatomy and physiology, how bison responded to climate change (especially drought), and early bison hunters and pre-contact trade. It also focuses on the era of European contact, in particular the arrival of the horse, and some of the first known instances of over-hunting. By the 19th century, bison reached a "tipping point" as a result of new tanning practices, an early attempt at protective legislation, and ventures to introducing cattle as a replacement stock.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Buffalo Gone Baby Gone
- By Jim on 03-24-18
By: Geoff Cunfer, and others
-
First Peoples in a New World
- Colonizing Ice Age America
- By: David J. Meltzer
- Narrated by: Christopher Prince
- Length: 11 hrs
- Abridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 179
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 152
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 151
More than 12,000 years ago, in one of the greatest triumphs of prehistory, humans colonized North America, a continent that was then truly a new world. Just when and how they did so has been one of the most perplexing and controversial questions in archaeology.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Last Gasp of American Anthropological Orthodoxy
- By Thomas66 on 01-05-17
By: David J. Meltzer
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The Great Warming
- Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations
- By: Brian Fagan
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 9 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 103
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 73
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 74
The history of the Great Warming of a half millennium ago suggests that we may yet be underestimating the power of climate change to disrupt our lives todayand our vulnerability to drought, writes Fagan, is the silent elephant in the room.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Good book but unpracticed, disjointed narration.
- By Paul on 09-12-10
By: Brian Fagan
-
The Statues That Walked
- Unraveling the Mystery of Easter Island
- By: Terry Hunt, Carl Lipo
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 6 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4 out of 5 stars 442
-
Performance4 out of 5 stars 380
-
Story4 out of 5 stars 386
The monumental statues of Easter Island, both so magisterial and so forlorn, gazing out in their imposing rows over the island’s barren landscape, have been the source of great mystery ever since the island was first discovered by Europeans on Easter Sunday 1722. How could the ancient people who inhabited this tiny speck of land, the most remote in the vast expanse of the Pacific islands, have built such monumental works?
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3 out of 5 stars
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The "Mystery of Easter Island" remains raveled
- By Diane on 09-14-12
By: Terry Hunt, and others
-
Lesser Beasts
- A Snout-to-Tail History of the Humble Pig
- By: Mark Essig
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 7 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 708
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 642
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 637
As historian Mark Essig reveals in Lesser Beasts, swine have such a bad reputation for precisely the same reasons they are so valuable as a source of food: they are intelligent, self-sufficient, and omnivorous. What's more, he argues, we ignore our historic partnership with these astonishing animals at our peril.
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5 out of 5 stars
-
Virtuous Carnivors?
- By David on 04-14-16
By: Mark Essig
-
The Horse, the Wheel, and Language
- How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World
- By: David W. Anthony
- Narrated by: Tom Perkins
- Length: 18 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 692
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 582
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 576
Roughly half the world's population speaks languages derived from a shared linguistic source known as Proto-Indo-European. But who were the early speakers of this ancient mother tongue, and how did they manage to spread it around the globe? The Horse, the Wheel, and Language solves a puzzle that has vexed scholars for two centuries and recovers a magnificent and influential civilization from the past.
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5 out of 5 stars
-
Excellent
- By Anthony on 08-09-19
By: David W. Anthony
-
1493
- Uncovering the New World Columbus Created
- By: Charles C. Mann
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean
- Length: 17 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 2,110
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,761
-
Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,760
More than 200 million years ago, geological forces split apart the continents. Isolated from each other, the two halves of the world developed radically different suites of plants and animals. When Christopher Columbus set foot in the Americas, he ended that separation at a stroke. Driven by the economic goal of establishing trade with China, he accidentally set off an ecological convulsion as European vessels carried thousands of species to new homes across the oceans.
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5 out of 5 stars
-
Fascinating Mindbending History.
- By Betsy Powel on 12-19-11
By: Charles C. Mann
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Madness in great ones must not unwatched go
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Reporter Sam Kean reveals the periodic table as it’s never been seen before. Not only is it one of man's crowning scientific achievements, it's also a treasure trove of stories of passion, adventure, betrayal, and obsession. The infectious tales and astounding details in The Disappearing Spoon follow carbon, neon, silicon, and gold as they play out their parts in human history, finance, mythology, war, the arts, poison, and the lives of the (frequently) mad scientists who discovered them.
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Great Book, Great Narration, But...
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Every day, we make decisions on topics ranging from personal investments to schools for our children to the meals we eat to the causes we champion. Unfortunately, we often choose poorly. The reason, the authors explain, is that, being human, we are all susceptible to various biases that can lead us to blunder. Our mistakes make us poorer and less healthy; we often make bad decisions involving education, personal finance, health care, mortgages and credit cards, the family, and even the planet itself.
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3 out of 5 stars
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An overly long Nudge in the right direction
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Lords of Finance
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It is commonly believed that the Great Depression that began in 1929 resulted from a confluence of events beyond any one person's or government's control. In fact, as Liaquat Ahamed reveals, it was the decisions made by a small number of central bankers that were the primary cause of the economic meltdown, the effects of which set the stage for World War II and reverberated for decades.
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4 out of 5 stars
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interesting insight into interwar period!
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The Revenge of Geography
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In The Revenge of Geography, Robert D. Kaplan builds on the insights, discoveries, and theories of great geographers and geopolitical thinkers of the near and distant past to look back at critical pivots in history and then to look forward at the evolving global scene. Kaplan traces the history of the world's hot spots by examining their climates, topographies, and proximities to other embattled lands.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Painful to listen to
- By Bookworm on 12-27-13
By: Robert D. Kaplan
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Why Is Sex Fun?
- The Evolution of Human Sexuality
- By: Jared Diamond
- Narrated by: L. J. Ganser
- Length: 5 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 173
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 153
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 154
There is no one better qualified than Jared Diamond - renowned expert in the fields of physiology and evolutionary biology and award-winning author - to explain the evolutionary forces that operated on our ancestors to make us sexually different. With wit and a wealth of fascinating examples, he explains how our sexuality has been as crucial as our large brains and upright posture in our rise to human status.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Birds!
- By Riley on 02-10-19
By: Jared Diamond
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A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived
- The Human Story Retold Through Our Genes
- By: Adam Rutherford
- Narrated by: Adam Rutherford
- Length: 12 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 814
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 689
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 681
In our unique genomes, every one of us carries the story of our species - births, deaths, disease, war, famine, migration, and a lot of sex. But those stories have always been locked away - until now. Who are our ancestors? Where did they come from? Geneticists have suddenly become historians, and the hard evidence in our DNA has completely upended what we thought we knew about ourselves. Acclaimed science writer Adam Rutherford explains exactly how genomics is completely rewriting the human story - from 100,000 years ago to the present.
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5 out of 5 stars
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I wish this book was in American high schools.
- By melody sheldon on 03-31-19
By: Adam Rutherford
What listeners say about Guns, Germs, and Steel
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Leslie
- 03-31-23
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.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
- Edward
- 03-22-09
a decent listen
i did not love the book, but the narration is clear, and it was a reasonably interesting listen. just not particularly memorable.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
- Krystyn
- 07-22-06
Expected more ...
The premise of the book is fascinating and it started out with great promise ... but soon lapsed into a pretty rudimentary review of human history, travel, and evolution. I stopped and started it a lot because it became a bit dull towards the middle. In the end, I don't feel like the author really answered the question he set out to answer. Maybe there was just too much hype ...
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
- Johnny
- 01-06-10
Stunning
Very few books actually change your view of reality. This one will...
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Gene.
- 07-12-19
Interesting explaining the how and why civilizati
explaining the how and why civilizations evolved the way they did because of resources and locations.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Amazon Customer
- 06-15-20
Must read
Meticulously outlined, the story of mankind’s origins and progression is finally given some valuable context. This book is a little dry, but it provides rich knowledge for the arguments against racism.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Alexander
- 02-11-16
Interesting and thought provoking
Interesting theory summarizing all of history based on geography, flora, fauna, guns, germs, and steel.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
- Armand
- 11-26-10
Abridged Version not enough
Just when you start to follow his ideas and find them interesting...it ends! I got the plants, animals and germs part but I guess I have to buy the book to get the guns and steel ending!
Interesting and enlightening audiobook though.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
- Chris
- 01-21-07
Very interesting listen.
I absolutely enjoyed this book, when I would stop listening I couldn't wait until I started again. He has some very interesting theories and facts that are presented in an enjoyable educational way. Although some of the theories presented I don't agree with, he does list some important things to think about. If you are fascinated by culture, and want to understand the history of humans this is a good place to start.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Jeff Irish
- 02-13-23
Interesting takes
Some interesting theories are proposed. Narration was good. I be listened twice and enjoy history. Boo feels like a good professor giving a 3-4 class seminar.
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