Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies

Book Rating: 4 of 5

I read Guns, Germs and Steel (GGS) after having read that Yuval Hari was strongly influenced by the book when he wrote Sapiens. Usually I try to review a book withing a few weeks of finishing it but unfortunately in this case I’m at least 2 months behind schedule having finished GGS sometime in early April.

My reflection on GGS is that isn’t a rather engaging popular history/comparative anthropology book. The style of the book is laying out Jared Diamonds thesis that the technological differences between pre-modern societies is explained by their geographic location and not by any genetic superiority. The book then spends a great deal of time explaining why this is the case.

Its a rather long book. And it digs deeply in parts of the world that I wasn’t familiar with. Prior to reading GGS I doubt I could have located New Guinea on a map nor explained anything about its history. The books discussion of the evolution of society in New Guinea was particularly interesting to me.

The book gave me a much better explanation on how the Spanish so easily conquered the new world. Reading the first hand accounts of the butchering of the Incans at Cajamarca was pretty shocking. In a sense I found GGS to be the story of Genocide. Our history does not seem to be one of diversity and belonging but rather a lot of assimilation or other-ing and elimination.

I think the weak part of the book is when it explores more modern events. I found Jared explanation on the differences between China 1500 to present and Europe 1500 to present t be a little thin. I think it would have made the book too long to fully explore the topic and Jared had to cut it back to something digestible in a couple of chapters. So it feels rushed and not fully explored.

I recommend GGS for anyone with an interest in history and or anthropology. It represents a very interesting discussion of Humanity.