Guns, Germs Steel: The Fates of Human Societies

13,000 years of human history,beginning when stone-age gathers constituted the entire population.

Explaining what William McNeill called iThe Rise of the West/i has become the central problem in the study of global history. In iGuns, Germs, and Steel/i 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.