Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies | 
 enlarge | Author: Jared M. Diamond
Publisher: Jonathan Cape
Category: Book
Buy Used: £31.23
Used (3) from £31.23
Avg. Customer Rating:  1 reviews
Sales Rank: 671073
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 480
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2
ISBN: 0224038095
EAN: 9780224038096
ASIN: 0224038095
Publication Date: April 3, 1997
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Hardcover Jonathan Cape Hardcover Very Good dustjacket 1997 Previous owner has written gift inscription on coloured end paper.
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| Customer Reviews:
A book for the millenium November 14, 1998
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is a book that takes us out of the straight jacket of racialism that has dominated the twentieth century into a new way of understanding how we humans are different. It is a very well written account that covers a vast canvas by a true polymath. (He teaches physiology to Californian medical students) It is full of fascinating detail about historical clashes between ethnic groups, the influences of disease, crop culture, language development, the growth of empires. The author looks at the reasons why some cultures change at a different rate to others. Why some have hierarchies whereas others do not. It is social history on a vast scale. You come away with a clearer picture of how our western world is so cluttered and why our hunter-gatherer bretheren choose to live in less complex and more egalitarian societies and how, sadly, they are fast disappearing. This is one of the most important books of the decade.
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