Guns, Germs, & Steel by Jared Diamond | Key Takeaways, Analysis & Review: The Fates of Human Societies

By IRB Media

This companion to Guns, Germs, & Steel includes:

• Overview of the book

• Important People

• Key Takeaways

• Analysis of Key Takeaways

• and much more!

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Aug 1, 2015
• ISBN: 9781943427581

IRB Media

With IRB books, you can get the key takeaways and analysis of a book in 15 minutes. We read every chapter, identify the key takeaways and analyze them for your convenience.

Book preview

OVERVIEW

Guns, Germs, & Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond won the Pulitzer Prize for the first edition that was published in 1997. Thirteen thousand years of human history are explored in order to explain why societies around the world evolved differently from each other and how those differences led to the conquest of particular groups at the hands of others, particularly the defeat of Native Americans, both North and South, at the hands of much more sophisticated and advanced Eurasian forces.

Scholars from a variety of concentrations, cultural, biological and geographical, have studied societal evolution over the years. However, each has been able to offer only a partial answer to the larger question. Also, previous studies have often been controversial because they veer into biased evaluations of the worth of certain groups of people rather than remaining entirely fact-based. Through research and factoring in the conclusions of several disciplines, it is possible to determine how environmental differences, not biology, account for the disparate fates of various societies.

Those specific environmental factors that led to a society becoming victor or victim evolved from broad and sometimes unexpected patterns in history. This