Book: Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond

Posted in Member Reviews on March 15, 2002

— Review by Kelly Reed, as printed in the March 2002 issue of the Mensokie

A Pulitzer prize winning, sweeping, groundbreaking, whirlwind view of human history over the last 13,000 years, Guns, Germs and Steel is a masterful history lesson of mankind and the creation, and sometimes extermination of civilizations. A central theme throughout the book is the attempt to answer the question, “Why did history unfold differently on different continents?” Most people know that food production began in the Fertile Crescent, but why there and not in the Americas or elsewhere? How did the Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro, with 168 Spanish soldiers, overthrow the Inca Empire of millions and kill Atahuallpa, the Inca emperor, while 80,000 Inca soldiers surrounded him? Or, why didn’t American germs kill European invaders instead of the other way around?

Beginning at the end of the Pleistocene Era and last Ice Age, when village life emerged around 11,000 B.C., Diamond compellingly walks the reader through various continents throughout history and details their significant contributions as a society, as well as the reasons some societies did not make certain contributions.

Guns, Germs and Steel is a broad book covering a lot of ground across many different disciplines: anthropology, epidemiology, linguistics, archeology and technological development. The author skillfully weaves sound and compelling answers to the questions of the fates of human societies and brings the reader a deeper understanding of our own history.