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Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fate of Human Societies - Community Reviews back

by Jared Diamond, Doug Ordunio, Random House Audio
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Cassandra Reads
Cassandra Reads rated it 13 years ago
Strangely, I'm kind of sad that I've finished this book. At the same time, I wish it hadn't taken me so long to read. Three weeks isn't that long, but if I'd read it all in a couple of days I would have more to say about it than that it made me think. I should have taken notes, but I got lazy. I was...
mashahsam
mashahsam rated it 14 years ago
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Dilettante
Dilettante rated it 15 years ago
This book affected the way that I looked at the world, from a historical perspective, and in every world-building exercise I've ever undertaken for a novel or short story.It literally change my perspective. A must read for anyone who wants to write speculative fiction or understand why it is that s...
AC
AC rated it 15 years ago
Very interesting and worthwhile -- won a Pulitzer. I might have found it difficult to read -- the audible version was abridged, and even then the first half was a bit dry, devoted to paleolithic plant ecology and the like. But then it 'heats' up, so to speak.His basic question is why did Eurasia d...
ybrikman
ybrikman rated it 16 years ago
To be honest, I didn't really know much about this book before I started to read it, so I was surprised to find that it was essentially a college thesis. The writing style is extremely dry, the structure is very much that of an essay, and at times, it can be a real chore to get through this book.Hav...
Myrto
Myrto rated it 16 years ago
Very interesting, if only for the first chapter, which gives a great summary of the history of human evolution and migration around the world.
joannajoanna
joannajoanna rated it 16 years ago
This book started out OK but it quickly got excessively repetitive to me. I couldn't help but wonder if Diamond was just trying to figure out how many ways he could say the same thing. I mean, sheesh, you've already told us once do we really need to hear it again? The book could have been shorte...
JasonKoivu
JasonKoivu rated it 17 years ago
Misleading! The actual title should be Germs, More Germs and a bit about Steel And Guns, but not very much on those last two really...I mean, we want to put Guns first because it's more attention-grabbing than Germs, but let's face it, this book is mostly about Germs. Why has no publishing house kno...
UNICORN PORN FOR ALL
UNICORN PORN FOR ALL rated it 17 years ago
This book literally changed everything for me.
Manny Rayner's book reviews
Manny Rayner's book reviews rated it 18 years ago
I liked this book, and it taught me a bunch of things I hadn't known before I read it. Jared Diamond has clearly had a more interesting life than most of us, and spent significant amounts of time in a wide variety of different kinds of society, all over the world. He says he got the basic idea from ...
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