About this product

Product Identifiers

PublisherNorton & Company, Incorporated, w. w.

ISBN-100393317552

ISBN-139780393317558

eBay Product ID (ePID)127361392

Product Key Features

Book TitleGuns, Germs, and Steel : the Fates of Human Societies

Number of Pages480 Pages

LanguageEnglish

Publication Year1999

TopicEnvironmental Science (See Also Chemistry / Environmental), Civilization, Sociology / General, Anthropology / Cultural & Social

IllustratorYes

GenreSocial Science, Science, History

AuthorJared M. Diamond

FormatTrade Paperback

Dimensions

Item Height1.4 in

Item Weight20.8 Oz

Item Length9.2 in

Item Width6.1 in

Additional Product Features

Intended AudienceTrade

LCCN96-037068

ReviewsArtful, informative, and delightful.... There is nothing like a radically new angle of vision for bringing out unsuspected dimensions of a subject, and that is what Jared Diamond has done., Serious, groundbreaking biological studies of human history only seem to come along once every generation or so. . . . Now [Guns, Germs, and Steel] must be added to their select number. . . . Diamond meshes technological mastery with historical sweep, anecdotal delight with broad conceptual vision, and command of sources with creative leaps. No finer work of its kind has been published this year, or for many past., No scientist brings more experience from the laboratory and field, none thinks more deeply about social issues or addresses them with greater clarity, than Jared Diamond as illustrated by Guns, Germs, and Steel. In this remarkably readable book he shows how history and biology can enrich one another to produce a deeper understanding of the human condition., Fascinating and extremely important... [A] synopsis doesn't do credit to the immense subtlety of this book., An epochal work. Diamond has written a summary of human history that can be accounted, for the time being, as Darwinian in its authority., [Diamond] is broadly erudite, writes in a style that pleasantly expresses scientific concepts in vernacular American English, and deals almost exclusively in questions that should interest everyone concerned about how humanity has developed. . . . [He] has done us all a great favor by supplying a rock-solid alternative to the racist answer. . . . A wonderfully interesting book., This is a brilliantly written, passionate, whirlwind tour though 13,000 years of history on all the continents--a short history of everything about everybody.... By at last providing a convincing explanation for the differing developments of human societies on different occasions, the book demolishes the grounds for racist theories of history.... After reading the first two pages, you won't be able to put it down., A book of remarkable scope, a history of the world in less than 500 pages which succeeds admirably, where so many others have failed, in analyzing some of the basic workings of culture process.... One of the most important and readable works on the human past published in recent years.

Dewey Edition22

Dewey Decimal303.4

Synopsis"Fascinating.... Lays a foundation for understanding human history."--Bill Gates 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 had a head start in food production advanced beyond the hunter-gatherer stage, and then developed 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., 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 had a head start in food production advanced beyond the hunter-gatherer stage, and then developed 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.

LC Classification NumberHM206.D48 1999