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  • Guns, Germs and Steel

  • The Fate of Human Societies
  • Written by: Jared Diamond
  • Narrated by: Doug Ordunio
  • Length: 16 hrs and 20 mins
  • 4.4 out of 5 stars (651 ratings)

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Guns, Germs and Steel

Written by: Jared Diamond
Narrated by: Doug Ordunio
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Publisher's Summary

Pulitzer Prize, General Nonfiction, 1998

Guns, Germs and Steel examines the rise of civilization and the issues its development has raised throughout history.

Having done field work in New Guinea for more than 30 years, Jared Diamond presents the geographical and ecological factors that have shaped the modern world. From the viewpoint of an evolutionary biologist, he highlights the broadest movements both literal and conceptual on every continent since the Ice Age, and examines societal advances such as writing, religion, government, and technology. Diamond also dissects racial theories of global history, and the resulting work—Guns, Germs and Steel—is a major contribution to our understanding the evolution of human societies.

©1997 Jared Diamond (P)2011 Random House

What listeners say about Guns, Germs and Steel

Average Customer Ratings
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  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

So painfully blah!

Save your time and your credit. There's some good info but there are more interesting books to get it from.

Imagine asking someone how their pizza was. "Hot gooey cheese with a sweet yet tangy sauce. The dough was light with a nice crust to it. Nothing but the freshest toppings.....etc." That would be descriptive, interesting and informative. This book's answer would be something more like "There was dough. Dough is made with multiple ingredients, one of them being flour. Now in this case it was bleached flour, it differs from its unbleached counterpart. There are many types of flour, each with its own purpose. Water was added to the flour. Water in most cases today is filtered before human consumption....blah blah blah."

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14 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
  • TK
  • 2018-05-18

A must!

You aren't a junior historian without it. The narration is clear and digestible, albeit best at 1.1x or 1.2x speed.

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9 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Boring yet thought provoking

While I found some of the information and theories in this book fairly thought provoking, I also found that it drones and drones and my mind often wandered as I listened. A nail biter this is not.

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7 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Great at what it does but read critiques as well

It is a good book written with good narrative and great narration. This book is heavily criticized in academic circles and while I think the book is still worth reading, one should understand that it is too simplistic and too narrowly focused on this specific element of history to be taken entirely at face value.

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3 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Provides core thesis with many examples.

core concepts were easy to grasp. author provided many examples and summarised after every few chapters.

if you already have a background in evolutionary biology, you can probably skip the first few chapters.

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3 people found this helpful

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    3 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

This book did not live up to its reputation.

It was recommended by a number of friends and I thought that my love of history would make it a perfect match. If I had been reading it instead of listening, I would never have finished it. Boring is too subtle a word to describe this book. At least the narrator tried to make it more interesting, kudos for him for not yawning.(probably were cut out!)

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3 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Worth the read

I finally read this masterpiece! It was worth every Pulitzer Prize winning minute. Jared Diamond provides a strong theory for how geography created the circumstances leading to the advancement of some populations over others over time. The move from hunter-gatherer to farmers with domesticated crops and animals, the creation of societies and then language and technology... all of it basically depended on which latitude humans, plants and animals evolved in. A fascinating theory and I think it holds up well.

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2 people found this helpful

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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Starts and ends well, tedious middle.

Obviously an important book and topics that are given careful, if at times tedious treatment. If you just read/listen to first and last chapters, you get a pretty good synthesis. The narration is fine and clear, but all the extensive details become a bit boring, and the narrator is unable to make these details particularly interesting to the typical listener.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Good read, very interesting!

My only complaint is that the thesis gets a little repetitive by the end.

Otherwise it's a well read, well researched book with plenty of interesting insight!

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars
  • 101
  • 2019-08-22

This is not a history book

This book is flawed in a number of ways that I don't care to get into, though it is an entertaining read, I'd take it in its entirety with a huge helping of salt. Also Jared Diamond is not a historian..................

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1 person found this helpful