Guns Germs & Steel Cl (Tv Tie-In

by Diamond,Jared

• ISBN13: 9780393061314
• ISBN10: 0393061310
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-07-17
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Summary

With a new chapter. The phenomenal bestseller--over 1.5 million copies sold--is now a major PBS special. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Guns, Germs, and Steel is a brilliant work answering the question of why the peoples of certain continents succeeded in invading other continents and conquering or displacing their peoples. This edition includes a new chapter on Japan and all-new illustrations drawn from the television series. Until around 11,000 BC, all peoples were still Stone Age hunter/gatherers. At that point, a great divide occurred in the rates that human societies evolved. In Eurasia, parts of the Americas, and Africa, farming became the prevailing mode of existence when indigenous wild plants and animals were domesticated by prehistoric planters and herders. As Jared Diamond vividly reveals, the very people who gained a head start in producing food would collide with preliterate cultures, shaping the modern world through conquest, displacement, and genocide. The paths that lead from scattered centers of food to broad bands of settlement had a great deal to do with climate and geography. But how did differences in societies arise? Why weren't native Australians, Americans, or Africans the ones to colonize Europe? Diamond dismantles pernicious racial theories tracing societal differences to biological differences. He assembles convincing evidence linking germs to domestication of animals, germs that Eurasians then spread in epidemic proportions in their voyages of discovery. In its sweep, Guns, Germs and Steel encompasses the rise of agriculture, technology, writing, government, and religion, providing a unifying theory of human history as intriguing as the histories of dinosaurs and glaciers. 32 illustrations.

Author Biography

Jared Diamond is professor of geography at the University of California at Los Angeles.

Table of Contents

Prologue Yali's Question
The regionally differing courses of history	13	(20)
PART ONE From Eden to Cajamarca	33	(50)
Up to the Starting Line
What happened on all the continents before 11,000 B.C.?	35	(18)
A Natural Experiment of History
How geography molded societies on Polynesian islands	53	(14)
Collision at Cajamarca
Why the Inca emperor Atahuallpa did not capture King Charles I of Spain	67	(16)
PART TWO The Rise and Spread of Food Production	83	(110)
Farmer Power
The roots of guns, germs, and steel	85	(8)
History's Haves and Have-Nots
Geographic differences in the onset of food production	93	(11)
To Farm or Not to Farm
Causes of the spread of food production	104	(10)
How to Make an Almond
The unconscious development of ancient crops	114	(17)
Apples or Indians
Why did peoples of some regions fail to domesticate plants?	131	(26)
Zebras, Unhappy Marriages, and The Anna Karenina Principle
Why were most big wild mammal species never domesticated?	157	(19)
Spacious Skies and Tilted Axes
Why did food production spread at different rates on different continents?	176	(17)
PART THREE From Food to Guns, Germs, and Steel	193	(100)
Lethal Gift of Livestock
The evolution of germs	195	(20)
Blueprints and Borrowed Letters
The evolutions of writing	215	(24)
Necessity's Mother
The evolution of technology	239	(26)
From Egalitarianism to Kleptocracy
The evolution of government and religion	265	(28)
PART FOUR Around the World in Five Chapters	293	(110)
Yali's People
The histories of Australia and New Guinea	295	(27)
How China Became Chinese
The history of East Asia	322	(12)
Speedboat to Polynesia
The history of the Austronesian expansion	334	(20)
Hemispheres Colliding
The histories of Eurasia and the Americas compared	354	(22)
How Africa Became Black
The history of Africa	376	(27)
EPILOGUE The Future of Human History as a Science	403	(62)
Who are the Japanese?	426	(24)
2003 Afterword: Guns, Germs, and Steel Today	450	(15)
Acknowledgments	465	(1)
Further Readings	466	(31)
Credits	497	(2)
Index	499