Annotation
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.
Awards
1997 New York Times Notable Books of the Year
1998 Pulitzer Prize
1998 California Book Awards
1997 Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science
1998 Royal Society Prizes for Science Books (formerly Aventis Prizes for Science Books)
| Genre | NonFiction Historical |
| Topics | Anthropology Biology Ecology Technology Archeology Linguistics Civilizations Small pox Diseases Natives |
| Setting | International |