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  • Published: 3 July 1998
  • ISBN: 9780099302780
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 592
  • RRP: $29.99

Guns, Germs and Steel

(Patterns of Life)




'A book of big questions, and big answers' Yuval Noah Harari, bestselling author of Sapiens

A short history of everybody for the last 13,000 years; now with a new afterword to mark the 20th anniversary of publication


'A book of big questions, and big answers' Yuval Noah Harari, bestselling author of Sapiens

Why has human history unfolded so differently across the globe? And what can it teach us about our current crisis?

Jared Diamond puts the case that geography and biogeography, not race, moulded the contrasting fates of Europeans, Asians, Native Americans, sub-Saharan Africans, and aboriginal Australians.

An ambitious synthesis of history, biology, ecology and linguistics, Guns, Germs and Steel is a ground-breaking and humane work of popular science that can provide expert insight into our modern world.

**WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE**

**Over One Million Copies Sold**

  • Published: 3 July 1998
  • ISBN: 9780099302780
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 592
  • RRP: $29.99

About the author

Jared Diamond

Jared Diamond is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Guns, Germs, and Steel, which was named one of TIME’s best non-fiction books of all time, the number one international bestseller Collapse and most recently The World Until Yesterday. A professor of geography at UCLA and noted polymath, Diamond’s work has been influential in the fields of anthropology, biology, ornithology, ecology and history, among others.

Also by Jared Diamond

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Praise for Guns, Germs and Steel

Monumental and monumentally good

William Leith, 4 stars, Scotsman

A book of big questions, and big answers

Yuval Noah Harari, Geographical

This is the book that turned me from a historian of medieval warfare into a student of humankind

Yuval Noah Harari, Week

A book of big questions, and big answers

Yuval Noah Harari, author of Sapiens

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

Nature

Fascinating, coherent, compassionate and completely accessible

Sunday Telegraph

A prodigious, convincing work, conceived on a grand scale

Observer

The most absorbing account on offer of the emergence of a world divided between have and have-nots... Never before put together so coherently, with such a combination of expertise, charm and compassion

The Times

Diamond's sideways-on view of human development may well establish its author as one of the very few scientists to have changed the way we think about history

Sunday Telegraph

One of the best books I've reviewed this year.

Lucille Turner, Bookmunch

Fascinating, coherent, compassionate and completely accessible

Sunday Telegraph

Diamond's sideways-on view of human development may well establish its author as one of the very few scientists to have changed the way we think about history

Sunday Telegraph

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

Nature

The most absorbing account on offer of the emergence of a world divided between have and have-nots... Never before put together so coherently, with such a combination of expertise, charm and compassion

The Times

A prodigious, convincing work, conceived on a grand scale

Observer

Monumental and monumentally good

William Leith, 4 stars, Scotsman

A book of big questions, and big answers

Yuval Noah Harari, Geographical

This is the book that turned me from a historian of medieval warfare into a student of humankind

Yuval Noah Harari, Week

A book of big questions, and big answers

Yuval Noah Harari, author of Sapiens

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

Nature

Fascinating, coherent, compassionate and completely accessible

Sunday Telegraph

A prodigious, convincing work, conceived on a grand scale

Observer

The most absorbing account on offer of the emergence of a world divided between have and have-nots... Never before put together so coherently, with such a combination of expertise, charm and compassion

The Times

Diamond's sideways-on view of human development may well establish its author as one of the very few scientists to have changed the way we think about history

Sunday Telegraph