num_pages: 498
description: "Diamond has written a book of remarkable scope ... one of the most important and readable works on the human past published in recent years."Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and a national bestseller: the global account of the rise of civilization that is also a stunning refutation of ideas of human development based on race.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 a head start in food production advanced beyond the hunter-gatherer stage, and then developed writing, technology, government, and organized 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 the way that the modern world came to be and stunningly dismantles racially based theories of human history.Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science, the Rhone-Poulenc Prize, and the Commonwealth Club of California's Gold Medal
language: English
title: Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
titlecomplete: Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
genres: Audiobook, Nonfiction, Politics, Historical, Science, Economics, World History, Sociology, History, Anthropology
ratings_count: 395611
series: Civilizations Rise and Fall
awards: awardedAt: 883641600000
name: Royal Society Science Book Prize
category: General Prize, awardedAt: 883641600000
name: Pulitzer Prize
category: General Nonfiction, awardedAt: 852105600000
name: California Book Award
category: Nonfiction (Gold), awardedAt: 978336000000
name: Puddly Award
category: History
publisher: W.W. Norton & Company