Roy Tang

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

2016 Book #10: Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond. I actually started this a few years back, thought I’d actually get around to finish it. The book is an analysis of history, of what geographical advantages certain civilizations had that allowed them to triumph over others. He presents a lot of interesting topics covering linguistics, animal/plant domestication and food production that may explain these differences. Given my poor geography knowledge, I would have appreciated more maps in the book. There are some topics here I enjoyed more than others, such as how Pizarro conquered the Incans. But a lot of the topics are presented a bit dryly, in an academic fashion. Making academic topics interesting is tough, I found myself having difficulty reading some of the later chapters. The book overall is very informative though, I learned a lot about the sort of things historians analyze to understand the particulars of human civilization.

View all my reviews