If you're hungering for a fresh perspective on how the world has been carved up across millennia, you just might devour "Guns, Germs, and Steel." It’s more than a history book; it's a narrative about the intrinsic forces that have shaped human societies. Jared Diamond takes you on a journey that spans from the Stone Age to modern times, challenging the conventional wisdom about social development and destiny that often leans on racial explanations. His biological lens on history is unique—it reframes our understanding in terms of environment and chance rather than inherent superiority.

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• Royal Society Science Book Prize for General Prize (1998)
• Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction (1998)
• California Book Award for Nonfiction (Gold) (1997)
• Puddly Award for History (2001)

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.

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