Product Description
With a new chapter. The phenomenal bestseller—over 1.5 million copies sold—is now a major PBS special. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Guns, Germs, and Steel is a brilliant work answering the question of why the peoples of certain continents succeeded in invading other continents and conquering or displacing their peoples. This edition includes a new chapter on Japan and all-new illustrations drawn from the television series. 32 illustrations.

Amazon.com Review
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.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.0 based on 1128 reviews)

Really good (especially if you like sorghum) by Crampton (New Zealand)

5 Stars
November 07, 2009
Great book! If you're going to say anything about politics you kind of have to read this book. Which is a shame because it's really long and hard. I nearly threw it on the floor about ten times because I was so sick of reading about different cereal crops and locations. But you know how it is -- you have to include a lot of proof if you're not going to say that rich white nations really deserve to be that way cos of their skills and hard work.

How to win a Pulitzer. by Marc Garrett

4 Stars
October 22, 2009
Apparently, if you can put together a couple of hundred pages arguing all races of people are equal, awards committees all over the globe are going to be tripping over themselves to give you a prize. Jared Diamond, congratulations on the Pulitzer. Even so, Diamond's work is readable, informative, and makes excellent arguments that the world is the way it is today because of geography, specifically, that large land areas oriented east-west, like Euro-Asia, are more likely to expand their agricultural successes, and hence their population and influence, due to there being similar climates at similar latitudes, and the serendipity of high yield plants such as wheat and domesticable animals such as oxen, occurring in some regions and not others. And if the differences are from these environmental factors, than they certainly cannot be from race. Had the Aborigines wondered to the Fertile Crescent and the Caucasians to Australia a few thousand years ago, then today the Aborigines would be suffering the guilt of Western Civilization while the Caucasians live happily in the Outback. Diamond may be right, but he certainly doesn't hide the fact that, when it comes to race, he is anything but an unbiased researcher: "the objection to racial explanations is not just that they are loathsome". Unbiased researchers don't condemn a possible conclusion, or any conclusion, in the prologue as loathsome without tainting their objectivity and undermining their obligation to follow the facts wherever they may lead. Worse yet, while he asserts that all races are about equal, just subject to geography and serendipity, he can't help but to commit the same loathsome act he himself condemns by claiming New Guineans are of "superior intelligence." This aside, Guns, Germs, and Steel offers a fascinating look at the last fifty thousand years of brutal conquests by the technologically superior societies over the less advanced with genuine insights into the underlying reasons that made it possible.

A review I guess... by Kwan M. Cheung

4 Stars
October 15, 2009
It's big bulky and almost dry, but I got what I paid for and will eventually read through it.

Mis information aboutr crops by factchecker

3 Stars
October 14, 2009
I've read some of the negative reviews and would like to say something about a repeating assertion that the Incas only had two crops, potatos and maize (corn). The Incas cultivated around seventy crops, including grains, beans and fruits. More, in fact, than any other region in the world. Their conquerers were only interested in a few of them and those are the ones we know about. Among the better known crops are lima beans, peppers, peanuts, sweet potatos, squash, quinoa and tomatoes. Salsa is an Incan original. There are also reviewers who claim the natives of Mexico grew mostly maize. Their agriculture was pretty diverse too.

Got this like it shipped from next door by holmes (IL USA)

5 Stars
October 13, 2009
If I made a online purchase my concern would be the shipping.I have some worst exp with shipping but this surprised me.It came to me like shipped from next door and the book was in perfect condition.

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