Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, 20th Anniversary Edition [Paperback]

In this artful, informative, and delightful (William H. McNeill,Artful, informative, and delightful.... There is nothing like a radically new angle of vision for bringing out unsuspected dimensions of a subject, and that is what Jared Diamond has done.An ambitious, highly important book.A book of remarkable scope, a history of the world in less than 500 pages which succeeds admirably, where so many others have failed, in analyzing some of the basic workings of culture process.... One of the most important and readable works on the human past published in recent years.The scope and the explanatory power of this book are astounding.No scientist brings more experience from the laboratory and field, none thinks more deeply about social issues or addresses them with greater clarity, than Jared Diamond as illustrated bySerious, groundbreaking biological studies of human history only seem to come along once every generation or so. . . . Now [[Diamond] is broadly erudite, writes in a style that pleasantly expresses scientific concepts in vernacular American English, and deals almost exclusively in questions that should interest everyone concerned about how humanity has developed. . . . [He] has done us all a great favor by supplying a rock-solid alternative to the racist answer. . . . A wonderfully interesting book.An epochal work. Diamond has written a summary of human history that can be accounted, for the time being, as Darwinian in its authority. Fascinating.... Lays a foundation for understanding human history. Bill Gates