Guns, Germs, and Steel

Posted on 11 November 2017 by Jared Diamond

Diamond has written a book of remarkable scope one of the most important and readable works on the human past published in recent years Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and a national bestseller the global account of the rise of civilization that is also a stunning refutation of ideas of human development based on race.In this artful, informative, and delightful William H McNeill, New York Review of Books book, Jared Diamond convincingly argues that geographical and environmental factors shaped the modern world Societies that had a head start in food production advanced beyond the hunter gatherer stage, and then developed writing, technology, government, and organized religion as well as nasty germs and potent weapons of war and adventured on sea and land to conquer and decimate preliterate cultures A major advance in our understanding of human societies, Guns, Germs, and Steel chronicles the way that the modern world came to be and stunningly dismantles racially based theories of human history.Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science, the Rhone Poulenc Prize, and the Commonwealth Club of California s Gold Medal New Read [ Guns, Germs, and Steel ] author [ Jared Diamond ] For Kindle ePUB or eBook – kino-fada.fr This is what happens when you take an intelligent person, and casually make a few mentions of a field of study they have no knowledge of.Mr Diamond, NOT an anthropologist, takes Marvin Harris theory of cultural materialism and uses it to explain everything in life, history, and the current state of the world.Materialism is a way of looking at human culture which, for lack of a better way to explain it easily here, says that people s material needs and goods determine behavior and culture For This is what happens when you take an intelligent person, and casually make a few mentions of a field of study they have no knowledge of.Mr Diamond, NOT an anthropologist, takes Marvin ...Why you white men have so much cargo i.e., steel tools and other products of civilization and we New Guineans have so little Jared Diamond is a biologist, who had a passion for studying birds, particularly the birds of New Guinea But as he came to know and appreciate the many native people he met in his work, the question asked by a New Guinean named Yani remained with him Why was it that westerners had so much rela...Author Jared Diamond s two part thesis is 1 the most important theme in human history is that of civilizations beating the crap out of each other, 2 the reason the beat ors were Europeans and the beat ees the Aboriginees, Mayans, et al is because of the geographical features of where each civilization happened to develop Whether societies developed gunpowder, written language, and other technological niceties, argues Diamond, is completely a function of whether they emerged amidst travel a Author Jared Diamond s two part thesis is 1 the most important theme in human history is that of civilizations beating the crap out of each other, 2 the reason the beat ors were Europeans and the beat ees the Aboriginees, Mayans, et al is because of the geographical features of where each civilization happened to develop Whether societies developed gunpowder, written language, and other technological niceties, argues Diamond, is completely a function of whether they emerged amidst travel and trade condusive geography and easily domesticable plants and animals.I m not sure I agree that why the Spanish obliterated the Mayans instead of visa versa is the most interesting question of human history How about the evolution of ideas, or the impact of great leaders and inventors But it is an interesting question, and worth exploring Diamond is a philosophical monist, neatly ascribing just about every juncture in human history to a single cause or related group of causes Given his exte...I liked this book, and it taught me a bunch of things I hadn t known before I read it Jared Diamond has clearly had ainteresting life than most of us, and spent significant amounts of time in a wide variety of different kinds of society, all over the world He says he got the basic idea from a conversation he had back in the 70s with a friend in New Guinea His friend, who later became a leader in the independence movement, wanted to talk about cargo manufactured goods, technology W I liked this book, and it taught me a bunch of things I hadn t known before I read it Jared Diamond has clearly had ainteresting life than most of us, and spent significant amounts of time in a wide variety of different kinds of society, all over the world He says he got the basic idea from a conversation he had back in the 70s with a friend in New Gu...It took me a while to complete Diamond s book and admittedly I also distracted myself with a few Roth novels in the meantime because of the density of the text and the variety of ideas presented The central thesis that it is not racial biology that determines the victors in history but rather a complex combination of agriculture, geography, population density, and continental orientation is a fascinating and compelling one The style is not academic and did admittedly put me off by using sen It took me a while to complete Diamond s book and admittedly I also distracted myself with a few Roth novels in the meantime because of the density of the text and the variety of ideas presented The central thesis that it is not racial biology that determines the victors in history but rather a complex combination of agriculture, geography, population density, and continental orientation is a fascinating and compelling one The style is not academic and did admittedly put me off by using sentences with in them , and yet does come across as the fruit of years or decades of research in an astounding number of fields simultaneously biology, agriculture, history, climatology, sociology, etc I can understand why Mr Diamond received accolades and a Pulitzer for this complex work written at ...This may be the most over rated book in the history of book rating The point he is making is that we in Western Civilazation haven t built skyscrapers, made moon landings, mass produced automobiles, eradicated polio or for that matter lived indoors with running water while aborigines in certain remote outposts still hunt and gather in isolated tribes because we are inherently any smarter orindustrious than those individuals Of course he is mostly right, but why in the 21st century is t This may be the most over rated book in the history of book rating The point he is making is that we in Western Civilazation haven t built skyscrapers, made moon landings, mass produced automobiles, erad...Misleading The actual title should be Germs, More Germs and a bit about Steel And Guns, but not very much on those last two reallyI mean, we want to put Guns first because it sattention grabbing than Germs, but let s face it, this book is mostly about Germs Why has no publishing house knocked ...In 1532, Francisco Pizarro and a band of 168 Spaniards punctured the heart of the Inca Empire and proceeded to capture its emperor, decimate its citizens, and plunder its gold Why didn t it happen the other way around Why didn t the Incas sail to Europe, capture Charles V, kill his subjects, and loot his castles and cathedrals Jared Diamond attempts to answer this question in Guns, Germs Steel Why have Europeans tended to dominate other peoples on other continents Does it have somethi In 1532, Francisco Pizarro and a band of 168 Spaniards punctured the heart of the Inca Empire and proceeded to capture its emperor, decimate its citizens, and plunder its gold Why didn t it happen the other way around Why didn t the Incas sail to Europe, capture Charles V, kill his subjects, and loot his castles and cathedrals Jared Diamond attempts to answer this question in Guns, Germs Steel Why have ...Jared sticks to the basic premise and plugs every hole in his argument so well to construct a magnificent explanation of the evolution of societies What makes the book particularly good is the intimate hands on experience that Jared has on the wide variety of fields required to attempt a book like this The last four or five chapters start to get very repetitive, but except for that Diamond has taken a stunningly large scale view of history that keeps you enthralled throughout the 13,000 years Jared sticks to the basic premise and plugs every hole in his argument so well to construct a magnificent explanation of the evolution of societies What makes the book particularly good is the intimate hands on experience that Jared h...The PuristI give you now Professor Twist,A conscientious scientist,Trustees exclaimed, He never bungles And sent him off to distant jungles.Camped on a tropic riverside,One day he missed his loving bride.She had, the guide informed him later,Been eaten by an alligator.Professor Twist could not but smile You mean, he said, a crocodile That bit of Ogden Nash whimsy came into my head as I thought about Jared Diamond s Guns, Germs, and Steel, a reflection on human history through the lens of e The PuristI give you now Professor Twist,A conscientious scientist,Trustees exclaimed, He never bungles And sent him off to distant jungles.Camped on a tropic riverside,One day he missed his loving bride.She had, the guide informed him later,Been eaten by an alligator.Professor Twist could not but smile You mean, he said, a crocodile That bit of Ogden Nash whimsy came into my head as I thought about Jared Diamond s Guns, Germs, and Steel, a reflection on human history through the lens of evolutionary biology Diamond, unlike Professor Twist, is seeking answers to real world problems In this case, he seeks to understand the plight of indigenous peoples and their subordination to European and Asian cultures in light of evolutionary pressures Even so, Diamond seems awkward in his attempts to justify the ways of the Blind Watchmaker to men as so One false note comes early in the book, when he departs from his evenhandedness to assure us that not only ...

English
11 November 2017

Jared Diamond