Books and Cooks West
December 2000
Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond
Guns, Germs, and Steel by
Jared Diamond
December 2, 2000 at 5:30
Kim's place
Menu: Raisin-bran muffins, vegetable soup, pesto pizza, tiramisu, brownies, ice cream, wine
Our rating: 3.9 cups of tea!
Amazon.com
Life isn't fair--here's why: Since 1500, Europeans have, for better and
worse, called the tune that the World has danced to. In Guns, Germs, and
Steel, Jared Diamond explains the reasons why things worked out that way.
It is an elemental question, and Diamond is not nearly the first to ask
it. However, he performs a singular service by relying on scientific fact
rather than specious theories of European genetic superiority. Diamond, a
professor of physiology at UCLA, suggests that the geography of Eurasia
was best suited to farming, the domestication of animals, and the free
flow of information. The more populous cultures that developed as a result
had more complex forms of government and communication--and increased
resistance to disease. Finally, fragmented Europe harnessed the power of
competitive innovation in ways that China did not. (For example, the
Europeans used the Chinese invention of gunpowder to create guns and
subjugate the New World.) Diamond's book is complex and a bit
overwhelming. But the thesis he methodically puts forth--examining the
"positive feedback loop" of farming, then domestication, then population
density, then innovation, and on and on--makes sense. Written without
favor, Guns, Germs, and Steel is good global history. --This text refers
to the hardcover edition of this title
Amazon.com
Explaining what William McNeill called The Rise of the West has become the
central problem in the study of global history. In Cuns, Germs, and Steel
Jared Diamond presents the biologist's answer: geography, demography, and
ecological happenstance. Diamond evenhandedly reviews human history on
every continent since the Ice Age at a rate that emphasizes only the
broadest movements of peoples and ideas. Yet his survey is binocular: one
eye has the rather distant vision of the evolutionary biologist, while the
other eye--and his heart--belongs to the people of New Guinea, where he
has done field work for more than 30 years.
