Guns, Germs, and Steel : The Fates of Human Societies
ISBN: 9780393317558 | 0393317552
Edition: 00Format: Trade Paper
Publisher: W W NORTON
Pub. Date: 4/17/1999
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In this "artful, informative, and delightful" (William H. McNeill, New York Review of Books ) book, Jared Diamond convincingly argues that geographical and environmental factors shaped the modern world. Societies that had had a head start in food production advanced beyond the hunter-gatherer stage, and then developed religion --as well as nasty germs and potent weapons of war --and adventured on sea and land to conquer and decimate preliterate cultures. A major advance in our understanding of human societies, Guns, Germs, and Steel chronicles ... MORE
| Prologue: Yali's Question: The regionally differing courses of history | p. 13 |
| Up to the Starting Line: What happened on all the continents before 11,000 B.C.? | p. 35 |
| A Natural Experiment of History: How geography molded societies on Polynesian islands | p. 53 |
| Collision at Cajamarca: Why the Inca emperor Atahuallpa did not capture King Charles I of Spain | p. 67 |
| Farmer Power: The roots of guns, germs, and steel | p. 85 |
| History's Haves and Have-Nots: Geographic differences in the onset of food production | p. 93 |
| To Farm or Not to Farm: Causes of the spread of food production | p. 104 |
| How to Make an Almond: The unconscious development of ancient crops | p. 114 |
| Apples or Indians: Why did peoples of some regions fail to domesticate plants? | p. 131 |
| Zebras, Unhappy Marriages, and the Anna Karenina Principle: Why were most big wild mammal species never domesticated? | p. 157 |
| Spacious Skies and Tilted Axes: Why did food production spread at different rates on different continents? | p. 176 |
| Lethal Gift of Livestock: The evolution of germs | p. 195 |
| Blueprints and Borrowed Letters: The evolution of writing | p. 215 |
| Necessity's Mother: The evolution of technology | p. 239 |
| From Egalitarianism to Kleptocracy: The evolution of government and religion | p. 265 |
| Yali's People: The histories of Australia and New Guinea | p. 295 |
| How China became Chinese: The history of East Asia | p. 322 |
| Speedboat to Polynesia: The history of the Austronesian expansion | p. 334 |
| Hemispheres Colliding: The histories of Eurasia and the Americas compared | p. 354 |
| How Africa became Black: The history of Africa | p. 376 |
| Epilogue: The Future of Human History as a Science | p. 403 |
| Acknowledgments | p. 427 |
| Further Readings | p. 429 |
| Credits | p. 459 |
| Index | p. 461 |
| Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved. |
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