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

Guns, Germs, and Steel is Jared Diamond’s attempt to determine why societies historically took different paths. It was named one of TIME’s best non-fiction books of all time, awarded the Pulitzer Prize, and turned into a PBS documentary.Diamond argues that differences between societies were caused by environmental factors that affected the historical development of those societies, not biological differences between the people of the societies. These factors led Eurasians (people from Asia, Europe, and North Africa) to historically have strategic advantages over non-Eurasians, including advanced knowledge, centralized governments, and immunity to infectious diseases.With these advantages, Eurasian colonists came to dominate much of the world. Diamond believes Eurasians had these advantages primarily because their native geography supported bountiful food production, which allowed for the development of other advantages in technology, knowledge, and government. In our guide, we’ll see how Diamond draws the link between food production and these advantages, we’ll fact-check his ideas, and we’ll consider how Diamond’s view has been received by other experts.