Guns, Germs, and Steel
Jared Diamond's sweeping account of why some societies came to dominate others, tracing it to geography rather than race.
Jared Diamond sets out to answer why history unfolded so unequally, why some peoples conquered others rather than the reverse. His answer points not to race or intelligence but to geography: the plants, animals, and continental shapes that gave some societies an early head start in farming, technology, and immunity to disease. Sweeping and argumentative, the book reframes human history as a story shaped by environment.
Recommended by 3 People
James Clear
Some environments provide more starting materials and more favorable conditions for utilizing inventions and building societies than other environments. This is particularly notable in the rise of European peoples, which occurred because of environmental differences and not because of biological differences in the people themselves. There are four primary reasons Europeans rose to power and conquered the natives of North and South America, and not the other way around: 1) the continental differences in the plants and animals available for domestication, which led to more food and larger populations in Europe and Asia, 2) the rate of diffusion of agriculture, technology and innovation due to the geographic orientation of Europe and Asia (east-west) compared to the Americas (north-south), 3) the ease of intercontinental diffusion between Europe, Asia, and Africa, and 4) the differences in continental size, which led to differences in total population size and technology diffusion.
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