Amazon.com
Life isn't fair--here's why: Since 1500, Europeans have, for better and
worse, called the tune that
the world has danced to. In Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond explains
the reasons why
things worked out that way. It is an elemental question, and Diamond is
not nearly the first to ask it.
However, he performs a singular service by relying on scientific fact rather
than specious theories of
European genetic superiority. Diamond, a professor of physiology at UCLA,
suggests that the
geography of Eurasia was best suited to farming, the domestication of animals,
and the free flow of
information. The more populous cultures that developed as a result had
more complex forms of
government and communication--and increased resistance to disease. Finally,
fragmented Europe
harnessed the power of competitive innovation in ways that China did not.
(For example, the
Europeans used the Chinese invention of gunpowder to create guns and subjugate
the New World.) Diamond's book is complex and a bit overwhelming. But the thesis he methodically
puts
forth--examining the "positive feedback loop" of farming, then domestication,
then population
density, then innovation, and on and on--makes sense. Written without favor,
Guns, Germs, and Steel is good global history.
W.W. Norton & Company
ISBN, 0393317552 |
