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Book #9 Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond

Definitely a worthwhile book for everyone to read, despite terrible redundancy. This book was recommended to me as a less philosophical, more concrete alternative to Daniel Quinn’s “Ishmael,” my favorite book. It’s worthy of the Pulitzer Prize it won for its content and not its long-winded prose.

Guns, Germs, and Steel is an attempt to answer the question, “Why did Europeans end up technologically superior to the rest of the world and not China or Africa or Papua New Guinea?” This question is of course a generalization of the last few hundred years. Diamond answers the question by exploring the ultimate role geography, climate, and resources had on the proliferation of guns, germs, and steel which are the more immediate or proximate answers to the questions. He describes, based on anthropology and other sciences, how humans went from hunter-gatherers to today’s agricultural societies and where the different countries diverged.

Interestingly enough, Daniel Quinn hits the nail on the head in “Ishmael.” Diamonds scientific explanations of humankind’s progress back up Quinn’s theories on the same subject. Kudos Mr. Quinn.