Guns, germs, and steel : the fates of human societies / Jared Diamond ; [with a new afterword about the modern world].
Diamond, Jared M.
1999
HM206 .D48 1999 (Mapit)
Available at General Collection

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Title Guns, germs, and steel : the fates of human societies / Jared Diamond ; [with a new afterword about the modern world].
Author Diamond, Jared M.
ISBN 0393317552 (pbk.)
9780393317558 (pbk.)
Imprint New York : W.W. Norton & Co., 1999, ©1997.
Language English
Description 494 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm
Call Number HM206 .D48 1999
Dewey Decimal Classification 303.4
Summary This book attempts to provide a short history of everybody for the last 13,000 years. The question motivating the book is: Why did history unfold differently on different continents? In case this question immediately makes you shudder at the thought that you are about to read a racist treatise, you aren't as you will see, the answers to the question don't involve human racial differences at all. The book's emphasis is on the search for ultimate explanations, and on pushing back the chain of historical causation as far as possible.
Note Afterword dated 2003: cf. p. 426.
Bibliography, etc. Note Includes bibliographical references (pages 442-471) and index.
Awards Pulitzer Prize, General Nonfiction, 1998.
Record Appears in On-Campus Resources > Books
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Preface to the paperback edition
Prologue: Yali's question: The regionally differing courses of history
From Eden to Cajamarca. Up to the starting line: What happened on all the continents before 11,000 B.C.?
A natural experiment of history: How geography molded societies on Polynesian islands
Collision at Cajamarca: Why the Inca emperor Atahuallpa did not capture King Charles I of Spain
The rise and spread of food production. Farmer power: The roots of guns, germs, and steel
History's haves and have-nots: Geographic differences in the onset of food production
To farm or not to farm: Causes of the spread of food production
How to make an almond: The unconscious development of ancient crops
Apples or Indians: Why did peoples of some regions fail to domesticate plants?
Zebras, unhappy marriages, and the Anna Karenina principle: Why were most big wild mammal species never domesticated?
Spacious skies and tilted axes: Why did food production spread at different rates on different continents?
From food to guns, germs, and steel. Lethal gift of livestock: The evolution of germs
Blueprints and borrowed letters: The evolution of writing
Necessity's mother: The evolution of technology
From egalitarianism to kleptocracy: The evolution of government and religion
Around the world in five chapters. Yali's people: The histories of Australia and New Guinea
How China became Chinese: The history of East Asia
Speedboat to Polynesia: The history of Austronesian expansion
Hemispheres colliding: The histories of Eurasia and the Americas compared
How Africa became black: The history of Africa
The future of human history as a science
2003 afterword: Guns, germs, and steel today.

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