Guns Germs and Steel the Fates of Human Society - Book Report/Review Example

Book Critique Paper: ‘Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Society’ by Jared Diamond Introduction “Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Society” is a splendidly documented book on the history of human civilisation. The book was published in the year 1997 and was written by Jared Diamond, who is a teacher of geography and physiology at the prestigious institute of University of California in Los Angeles or better known as UCLA. The book won Pulitzer Prize in the year 1998. It also received the prestigious prize of Aventis Prize for Best Science Book in the same year. The book captivates thoroughly enlightening 496 pages and was produced by the National Geographic Society. The book was broadcasted on PBS in the month of July in the year 2005. The book is published by W. W. Norton Company and the copyright of the literary piece is owned by the same organisation since 1st April of 1999. Overview The book, “Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Society” was initially published under a different title indicating the content of the title pertinently. The book was published with the title, “Guns, Germs and Steel: A short history of everybody for the last 13,000 years”. The book captivates the contentions regarding the Eurasian civilisations in which North Africa is also included and tries to explore the reasons behind the supremacy of the Eurasian civilisation in terms of conquering and surviving over the others. At the same time, the book also contests the common myth and faith of the fact that Eurasian hegemony has resulted out of any types of Eurasian intellectual, moral or imbibed and inherent superiority of gene. The book argues the bridges in power and technology among different human civilisations and societies that have evolved from the differences in environment which according to Professor Diamond Jarred are augmented by myriad feedback loops which are positive in nature. A mundane explanation of such grave and complex facts would have mitigated the effect and seriousness of the historical facts but the manifestations of the facts for better understandings make the book coherent and well documented. Jared puts examples of the instances where he shows that on one hand the cultural and genetic differences have been very supportive for the Eurasians like the supremacy of their writing languages, and on the other, the growth of the resistance power of the Eurasians from the endemic disease are the results of the advantageous positions which the Eurasians enjoyed due to the impact of geography on societies and culture from which the civilisations have evolved. Structure of the Book The 496 pages of breath-seizing facts on the evolution and civilisation of human history is very systematically culminated and presented before its readers with a well defined structure comprising of a prologue and an epilogue. Along with it, the book is divided into four parts under which there are chapters that set the readers into a trajectory of human civilisation across the globe. The prologue of the book bears the title, ‘Yali’s Question’ and the Epilogue is known by the name ‘The Future of Human History As A Science’. The Part One of the book bears the title ‘From Eden to Cajamarca’. Under this section there are three chapters, ‘Up To The Starting Line’, ‘A Natural Experiment of History’ and ‘Collision At Cajamarca’. Part two of the book is named, ‘The Rise And Spread of Food Production’. Under this section there are six chapters namely, ‘Farmer Power’, ‘History’s Haves and Have-Nots’, ‘To Farm Or Not To Farm’, ‘How To make An Almond’, ‘Apples Or Indians’ and ‘Zebras , Unhappy Marriages, And The Anna Karenina Principle’ and ‘The Spacious Skies and Titled Axes’. The third section of the book is known by the name, ‘From Food To Guns , Germs, And Steel’ and under this section there are four chapters namely ‘Lethal Gift of Livestock’, ‘Blueprints and Borrowed Letters’, ‘Necessity’s Mother’, and ‘ From Egalitarianism to Kleptocracy’. Part four of the book is titled as ‘Around the World in Five Days’ and consists of five chapters titled as ‘ Yali’s People’, ‘How China Became Chinese’, ‘Speedboat to Polynesia’ and ‘How Africa Became Black’ (Diamond, “Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies”). The prologue of the book is very unconventional and interesting. At the outset itself the readers are launched amid the conversation between Diamond and Yali, who is a politician at New Guinea. The conversation slowly turns into a discussion where the two people involved in the exchanges revert to the difference of technology between the countrymen of Yali and the Europeans who ruled their land for more than 200 years. Diamond recognizes the fact that the difference is not evolved from any genetic superiority and deliberately at this point he makes Yali put the question using the local dialect “cargo” as regards to the inventions and area pertaining to the manufacture of goods, “Why do white people have so much cargo, but we New Guineans have so little?” (Diamond, “Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies”, Pg 14). This query of Yali will take a formative base on which lots of other explorations regarding the superiority of the Europeans without any genetic advantage would be discussed. The realisation of Diamond gets more pertinent in the next page only and he seems to be very confident in applying the question of Yali at some other paradigms as well. Diamond contends , “Still other people, such as aboriginal inhabitants of Australia, the Americas and the southernmost Africa are no longer even the masters of their own lands but have decimated, subjugated, and in some cases even exterminated by European colonialists”(Diamond, “Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies”, Pg 15). In chapter 1 of the book, Diamond obviously discusses about the great leap which occurred in the progress of civilisation of human beings but at the same plane, he contends as well that those leaps cannot place any civilisation to a superior stature which the Europeans enjoyed, “Obviously, some momentous change took place in our ancestors’ capabilities between 100,000 and 50,000 years ago. The Great Leap Forward poses two major unresolved questions, regarding its triggering cause and its geographical location.” (Diamond, “Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies”, Pg 40). The critical analysis of the book becomes complete when an introspection into the concluding segment of the book is given equal importance along with the inherent material of the book as this segment of the book caters the concluding thought of the author and a clear pavement based on which thoughts for future could be framed. In the epilogue of the book Diamond thus contends that, “But introspection gives us far more insight into the ways of other humans than into those of dinosaurs. I am thus optimistic that historical studies of human societies can be pursued as scientifically as studies of dinosaurs- and with profit to our own society today, by teaching us what shaped the modern world, and what might shape our future.” Critical Reception The book, “Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies” is highly accredited and appreciated for its detailed research, ability to culminate conceptual perception and detailed insight into the growth and development of human civilisation. In the enlightening book, “Evolution and Empathy: The Genetic factor in the Rise of Humanism” by Milton. E. Brener, the reference of the book illustrates its importance in the canon of historical document of human civilisation and quotes, “This brings us to a popular book and, for many, influential one. In Guns Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond examines the rise of civilisations, worldwide, throughout history and much of prehistory.”(Brener, “Evolution and empathy: the genetic factor in the rise of humanism”, Pg 84). Conclusion The book, “Guns, Germs, and Steel” is undoubtedly a very enlightening, and engaging research work on the evolution of human civilisation. Along with it, the book is very evidently persuasive to clarify myriad doubts and myths pertaining to the superiority of genomic factors on the development of the race. It successfully establishes the predominance of external factors in the growth of human civilisation compared to the inherent genomic superiority of the races. Works Cited Brener, Milton. Evolution and Empathy: The Genetic Factor in the Rise of Humanism. McFarland, 2008. Diamond, Jared. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. W. W. Norton Company, 1999. Bibliography Diamond, Jared. Guns, Germs and Steel: A short history of everybody for the last 13,000 years. London, 2005. Lovgren, Stefan. “Guns, Germs and Steel": Jared Diamond on Geography as Power” July 06, 2005. National Geographic. July 29, 2011.   Read More