Non-fiction 22 Jan 2006 04:40 pm
Guns, Germs and Steel
Guns, Germs and Steel
Jared Diamond
You can summarize this book in a short sentence: the reason for the the difference in affluence of today’s societies comes from differences in geography influencing the development of human civilizations during the last 10,000 years or so. It is a bit unnerving that the author spends more than 500 pages discussing this, but I will grant that he does not want to present just his conclusions: he presents the data that led him to it.
The book is, as a whole, very interesting, but several passages are somewhat boring because they are just going over things that where already discussed: some pieces of information are presented again and again with different historical data to support the conclusion. It does strenghten the argument, but also makes for a book that is longer than it should be.
As I said, the book is full of historical data. It can be thought of as a short history of the last 10,000 years of human civilization: from the beginings of agriculture in the Middle East to the colonization of Oceania by Europeans in the last two or three centuries.
The title of the book refers to the three elements that gave an advantage to Europeans over other civilizations when those started navigating around the world and contacting other societies. It is Diamond’s assertion that all three depend on the initial geographic advantages the Eurasia have over all other areas of the globe, and he exposes (in detail) why he thinks that, including examples of other “clashes of civilizations” that did not include the Europeans but, nonetheless, ended up with the geographically-disadvantaged society destroyed or vanished.
Very good book, and probably a decent companion to his other work on civilizations, “Collapse”. I’m looking forward to reading that one.
