Guns, Germs and Steel

Abridged
Author: Jared Diamond
Narrator: Grover Gardner
Genres: History
Publisher: HighBridge Bestseller Editions
Date: August 2001
Length: 6 hours
Ratings:
  • Book Rating: 3/5
Formats:
  • CD
  • WMA

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Overview

Why did Eurasians conquer, displace, or decimate Native Americans, Australians, and Africans, instead of the other way around?

In this groundbreaking work, an evolutionary biologist dismantles racially-based theories and reveals the enviromental factors actually responsible for history's broadest patterns. A whirlwind tour through 13,000 years of human history, beginning when Stone Age hunger-gatherers constituted the entire population. Here is truly a world history, brilliantly written and radically new.

Selected Reviews

worth reading

by JH
  • Book Rating: 4/5

A book only a peleo-botanist could love

by Raj
  • Book Rating: 1/5

More...

Read All 31

Reviews (31)

worth reading

Written by JH from Toronto, ON on September 11th, 2008

  • Book Rating: 4/5

Not a "page turner", but definitely something everyone should listen to. He provides the most realistic theory behind the Eurasians domination of the Americas, Africa and Australia. Yes it is a bit a of history lesson - which can be boring at times, especially after listening to exciting audio books such as DaVinci Code, but if you are interested in the above then you should enjoy the book.

A book only a peleo-botanist could love

Written by Raj on June 24th, 2008

  • Book Rating: 1/5

This book had amazing potential but with too much detail for the lay reader (plus a reading style that reminded me of Ben Stein in Ferris Beuler) was enough to make me comatose... not good when I'm driving.

Like homework

Written by Anonymous from Gaithersburg, MD on May 25th, 2008

  • Book Rating: 2/5

Too much like doing my homework. The reader was monotonous. Great for insomnia.

Guns, Germs and steel

Written by Rick Lukacovic on November 10th, 2007

  • Book Rating: 2/5

This could have been an interesting topic. The book was much too detailed and repetitive for the casual listener. It would probably be appropriate for a serious academic. I could not finish listening to it.

missed the mark

Written by Diaphanous on November 5th, 2007

  • Book Rating: 2/5

He really grabbed me with the beginning of the book, but I got bogged down with his interest in plant genetics and the importance of domesticating animals. Overall, I just didnt buy all his conclusions. Its a great book for discussion and starts out with a really interesting direction, but I thought the bulk of the book was a bit boring.

Interesting but bogged down

Written by Eric Boyce on August 28th, 2007

  • Book Rating: 3/5

Very interesting material, but I could have used the abridged version of the abridged version...WAY too much menutia for me (I only have about 10-20min worth of attention span for the history of animal domestication). Great subject matter though. "Collapse" is a much better offering from a very skilled and qualified author.

Guns, Germs and Steel

Written by Tonia K Martinez on August 10th, 2007

  • Book Rating: 3/5

I usually listen as I commute, run errands, shop for groceries. Maybe too easily distracted, I had a hard time keeping my mind on the book. I found it interesting but not engaging.

guns, germs and wasted time

Written by Anonymous from Stillwater, MN on July 3rd, 2007

  • Book Rating: 1/5

This was about as boring a book as I have ever heard. When I read the excerpts in the book store I was very excited. Unfortunately like movie trailers that show all the good parts of a bad movie in 2 minutes the excerpts were the best part of the book. There is nothing new or earth shattering presented here. It is a rehashing of the same old sociological ideas that have been around for decades. Save your time and pass this one by.

Guns, Germs and Steel

Written by Cyndie Browning from Tulsa, OK on June 25th, 2007

  • Book Rating: 3/5

I've long wondered why most of the current civilizations around the world seem to be based on a European way of life, and Diamond does explain that effect adequately. However, the book itself is monotonous in the extreme; for a while there, I was counting the number of times the phrase "for instance..." appeared, and I began dreading the sound of those two words. And second, while "Guns" (flat-out killing off the native peoples) and "Germs" (the diseases Europeans brought with them that they'd become immune to after living for eons in close quarters with their domesticated animals) did indeed contribute to the reasons for their decimation of the native peoples, I never really got the connection of "Steel," per se, to the story.... unless by "Steel," Diamond was referring to pure technology. If _I_'d written this book, I don't know that I could've done a better job of presenting the information--which, in itself, was very interesting--but I surely would have tried.

Don't bother

Written by Diana from Gig Harbor, WA on June 2nd, 2007

  • Book Rating: 1/5

Waste of time and after waiting months to "read" this book. Perhaps it is because I had just finished "reading" 'A Short History of Nearly Everything' (which is an outstanding book). This one just fell short in everyway. It was repetitive and totally uninteresting. I barely got through it. I kept thinking this book could have been written by a fifth grader! If you have not rented this book yet, please get A Short History of Nearly Everything and don't bother with this one.

Selected Reviews

worth reading

by JH
  • Book Rating: 4/5

A book only a peleo-botanist could love

by Raj
  • Book Rating: 1/5

More...

Read All 31

Author Details

Author Details

Diamond, Jared

Jared Diamond was born in Boston to a physician father and a teacher/musician/linguist mother. After training in laboratory biological science he became Professor of Physiology at UCLA Medical School in 1966. However, already while in his twenties, he also developed a second parallel career in the ecology and evolution of New Guinea birds. That led him to explore some of the most remote parts of that great tropical island, and to rediscover New Guinea’s long-lost Golden-fronted Bowerbird. In his fifties he gradually developed a third career in environmental history, becoming Professor of Geography and of Environmental Health Sciences at UCLA.

As well as being renowned in academic circles, Jared Diamond is famous for his prize-winning books The Third Chimpanzee and Why is Sex Fun?, and for revolutionizing the study of global human history with Guns, Germs and Steel. His awards include a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (a ‘genius award’), and the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction. The broad range of disciplines that he weaves into his writing – linguistics, genetics, animal behaviour, molecular biology and others – caused a reviewer to write, ‘ “Jared Diamond” is suspected of actually being the pseudonym for a committee of experts.’ In his spare time he watches birds and learns languages (he is currently learning his twelfth). He is the father of seventeen-year-old twin sons who have informed much of his outlook on life. His latest book is Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive (Penguin, 2006).