FROM OUR EDITORS

In this Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Jared Diamond argues that both geography and the environment played major roles in determining the shape of the modern world. This argument runs counter to the usual theories that cite biology as the crucial factor. Diamond claims that the cultures that were first able to domesticate plants and animals were then able to develop writing skills, as well as make advances in the creation of government, technology, weaponry, and immunity to disease.

ANNOTATION

In this "artful, informative, and delightful (book)" ("New York Review of Books"), Jared Diamond offers a convincing explanation of the way the modern world came to be and stunningly dismantles racially based theories of human history.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Why did Eurasians conquer, displace, or decimate Native Americans, Australians, and Africans, instead of the other way around? In this groundbreaking work, an evolutionary biologist dismantles racially-based theories and reveals the environmental factors actually responsible for history's broadest patterns. A whirlwind tour through 13,000 years of human history, beginning when Stone Age hunter-gatherers constituted the entire population. Here is a truly a world history, brilliantly written and radically new.

FROM THE CRITICS

New Yorker

The scope and explanatory power of this book are astouding.

James Shreeve - The New York Times Book Review, 1997

An ambitious, highly important book.

New Yorker

The scope and explanatory power of this book are astounding.

Colin Renfrew - Nature

A book of remarkable scope. One of the most important and readable works on the human past.

New York Times Book Review

An ambitious, highly important book. Read all 15 "From The Critics" >

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

Fascinating....Lays a foundation for understanding human history. — Bill Gates

Paul R. Ehrlich