Reading Order
Guns, Germs, and Steel Reading Order
Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (1997) asks and answers one of the most sweeping questions in world history: why did European and Asian civilizations come to dominate the world, rather than civilizations from Africa, the Americas, or Australia? Diamond's answer — developed through geography, ecology, biology, and anthropology — is that the advantages weren't racial or cultural but geographic and environmental.
Where to start
Guns, Germs, and Steel
Complete Guns, Germs, and Steel Book List
- 1Buy
Guns, Germs, and Steel
Jared Diamond·1997·The complete argument. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Start here. - 2Buy
Collapse
Jared Diamond·2005·Diamond's follow-up — how and why societies collapse — examining the ecological, political, and cultural choices that determine whether civilizations survive. Read after Guns, Germs, and Steel. - 3Buy
The World Until Yesterday
Jared Diamond·2012·Diamond's account of what traditional small-scale societies can teach modern civilization. Read third.
Guns, Germs, and Steel — Frequently Asked Questions
What is Diamond's main thesis in Guns, Germs, and Steel?
Diamond's thesis is that the proximate cause of European domination — guns, germs, and steel — was itself caused by deeper geographic and ecological advantages that had nothing to do with racial or cultural superiority. Eurasia's large landmass oriented east-west (allowing crops and domesticated animals to spread across similar latitudes and climates), its diverse suite of domesticable wild plants and animals, and the dense, interconnected populations that resulted created earlier civilizations with more advanced technologies, more powerful pathogens (evolved through dense human-animal contact), and more experience with state organization and warfare. Diamond argues this is the answer to 'Yali's question' — asked by a New Guinean politician: 'Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?'
Why does Diamond focus on east-west versus north-south orientation?
Diamond argues that continental orientation determined the rate at which crops, animals, and technologies spread. Eurasia's primarily east-west orientation meant that crops domesticated in the Fertile Crescent (wheat, barley) could spread west to Europe and east to Asia without crossing major climate bands, because similar latitudes share similar day-length cycles, seasonal variation, and temperature ranges. The Americas' north-south orientation meant crops domesticated in Mesoamerica (maize) had to cross enormous climate bands to spread north or south, dramatically slowing diffusion. This geographic difference translated into faster accumulation of food surpluses, denser populations, more division of labor, more innovation, and ultimately more powerful weapons and resistant diseases in Eurasia.
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