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Posts Tagged ‘Jared Diamond’

Guns, Germs and Steel

Friday, January 6th, 2006

So when I went to empty out my Border’s giftcard the other day I didn’t find a copy of ‘Ishmael’ or ‘My Ishmael’, but I did find a copy of ‘Guns, Germs, and Steel’ by Jared Diamond.

Very good book. Read some of it in the old hardback version, this newer paperback version includes a chapter he wrote later about how history is affecting modern politics today.

One sentence summary by the author: “History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples’ environments, not because of biological differences among peoples themselves.”

Very dry description of a very well written book about the rise of ‘civilization’, the ways that environmental conditions changed the results in different parts of the world, and what happened when those societies collided.