The Elder Props - Fantastic books and replicas. Guns Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond: Against History. Please consider contributing to Living Anthropologically. Contributions fund ads to bring anthropology to public debates. Not tax-deductible. For more information, see Support Living Anthropologically. In 1997, ten years after calling agriculture The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race, Jared Diamond came out with Guns, Germs, and Steel. Jared Diamond’s ideas about human society and human nature continue to be enormously influential. The key question is whether Jared Diamond’s work is broadly correct about human history or a distortion of that history. Jared Diamond's work is a distorting disservice to the real historical record.Click To Tweet Yali’s Question & Central Thesis In Guns Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond purports to answer “Yali’s Question.”
Diamond’s answer was that it had nothing to do with any innate European superiority, neither intellectual nor genetic. Agriculture had been in Eurasia longer, giving the people in that region more time to develop technologies. H.I. #56: Guns, Germs, and Steel. Guns, germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies. Guns, Germs, and Steel, my best-known book, was published in 1997. It has been translated into 36 languages, including all the major languages of book publishing, as well as languages of small markets such as Estonian and Serbian. It won the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-fiction, plus numerous other prizes. I shall now summarize Guns, Germs, and Steel’s question, its answer, extensions and discoveries since its publication, unresolved questions, and criticisms.
Guns, Germs, and Steel seek to answer the biggest question of post-Ice-Age human history: why Eurasian peoples, rather than peoples of other continents, became the ones to develop the ingredients of power (guns, germs, and steel) and to expand around the world. An extraterrestrial being visiting the Earth 14,000 years ago could have been forgiven for failing to predict this outcome, because the human populations of other continents apparently also possessed advantages. Why did food production arise in only nine regions? 'Guns, Germs, and Steel' Reconsidered. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies has had the kind of impact that most scholarly authors can only dream about for their works.
First published by W.W. Norton in 1997, the book won a Pulitzer Prize the next year for its author, Jared Diamond, a professor of geography at the University of California at Los Angeles. Almost immediately, the book sold much better than most serious works (more than 1 million copies) and started to turn up on college reading lists -- in courses on world history, anthropology, sociology and other fields. By 1999, the book was one of 12 recommended to freshmen at the University of California at Berkeley (along with some works that had been around a while longer, like Genesis and Exodus from the Bible). In 2001, Cornell University had all of its freshmen read the book. This summer, PBS broadcast a series based on the book, with Diamond explaining many of his ideas. "What is so depressing about this approach isn’t just that it’s bad scholarship.
Books Go Boom! Guns, Germs and Steel. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by: Jared Diamond Jared Diamond is a UCLA Professor of Geography with a formal educational background in physiology who has become famous for his popular science books, of which 1997’s Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies is the most famous. The book won a Pulitzer Prize and even received its own documentary version courtesy of PBS. To this day, it sits on many college-reading lists, particularly for freshman courses, and also has a place on the recommended reading list of the U.S. State Department. Diamond’s work has reached a level of prominence that few in his field ever imagine of, and even people as diverse as Mitt Romney (whom Diamond castigated for a misappropriation) have quoted his theories.
Upon procuring the book, the first thought a reader might have is that here is a truly impressive project—an ambitious 425-page book that proclaims it will outline a grand theory for all of human history and development. Real History versus Guns Germs and Steel - Anthropology 2.5. In 1997, ten years after calling agriculture The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race, Jared Diamond came out with Guns, Germs, and Steel , a landmark book that would win the Pulitzer Prize, become a best-seller, and be filmed by National Geographic for PBS. It is surely the most widely read book about agriculture anyone has ever written. In 2012-2013 Guns, Germs and Steel returned to the fore, first because presidential candidate Mitt Romney cited it on his foreign-policy thinking, and then because Jared Diamond published The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn From Traditional Societies.
For more on the Romney-Diamond dust-up, see Jared Diamond won’t beat Mitt Romney and for anthropological reviews of Diamond’s newest, see Anthropology on Jared Diamond – The World Until Yesterday. It also seems that Jared Diamond has the ear of Bill Gates–who considers Guns, Germs, and Steel to be the answer to his own big questions. Guns, Germs, and Steel as Academic Porn , 2010:122). . 204.193.8.79/Social Sciences/Wasserman/World History/WH PDFs/CRITICAL RESPONSES TO Jared Diamond.pdf.