num_pages: 580
description: Explaining what William McNeill called The Rise of the West has become the central problem in the study of global history. In Guns, 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.
language: English
title: Guns, Germs and Steel: A Short History of Everybody for the Last 13,000 Years
titlecomplete: Guns, Germs and Steel: A Short History of Everybody for the Last 13,000 Years
genres: Sociology, Historical, Audiobook, History, Anthropology, Science, Economics, Politics, World History, Nonfiction
ratings_count: 395691
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: Vintage