Guns, Germs, and Steel, by Jared Diamond

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Recommended: Evolution of the technology industry

“Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo [goods] and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?” [p. 14]. This question: Yali’s question, is the centerpiece of Jared Diamond’s book Guns, Germs, and Steel. Diamond’s claim is that the evolution of technology and overall differences of the advancement of society are due to the factors of geographical location, plants, and animals . “Technology may have developed most rapidly in regions with moderate connectedness [Europe], neither too high [China], nor too low [India]” [p. 416] says Diamond in the epilogue of his book hoping to provide further proof for his argument. Diamond’s view of history is not the conventional every-day view a student who is reading the book may have but he successfully brings the reader to, at the very least, consider his ideas. His book is said to be “An ingenious attempt to explain racial differences in achievement.” [Michael Levin]

Diamond came across Yali while studying the evolution of birds in New Guinea as a biologist in 1972. Yali was a politician who, at the time when he met Diamond, was attempting to prepare the New Guinean people for self-governance. Diamond is a professor of Geography and Physiology at the University of California and is best known for the above-mentioned study of bird evolution and for his work in ecology and evolutionary biology. According to Michael Levin’s review of Guns, Germs, and Steel, which originally appeared in the July, 1998 issue of American Renaissance, Diamond’s only visible bias is towards hereditarians-- people who attribute both genes and environmental factors in group differences. Diamond is an Environmentalist who does not attributes group differences to environ...

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...nna Karenina Principle dealing with marriage in relation to animal domestication). The technical terms are well defined and the reader can understand what Diamond has to say even with minimal knowledge of the subject. Diamond gives plenty of visual aids throughout his book including numerous maps, graphs, tables, and even photographs of aboriginal inhabitants of lesser-developed countries. These photographs are a stunning component in Diamond’s work because the reader compares his or her self to the person in the picture and tries to come to the realization that, according to Diamond, mere chance separated one from the other in economic terms. Diamond’s unconventional view of History is well developed in his book and overall it is an exceptional piece of work.

Works Cited

Diamond, Jared. Guns, Germs, and Steel. Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc. April, 1999. Print.

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