Description

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize.In this "artful, informative, and delightful" (William H. McNeill, Ny Overview of Books) book, Jared Diamond convincingly argues that geographical and environmental factors shaped today's modern world. Societies that had had a head-start in food production advanced beyond the hunter gatherer stage, and then developed religion --in addition to nasty germs and potent weapons of war --and adventured on sea and land to conquer and decimate preliterate cultures. A significant advance within our knowledge of human societies, Guns, Germs, and Steel chronicles the way in which the modern world came into existence and stunningly dismantles racially based theories of human history.