Explaining what William McNeill called <i>The Rise of the West</i> has become the central problem in the study of global history. In <i>Guns, Germs and Steel</i> Jared Diamond presents the biologist's answer: geography, demography and ecological happenstance. Diamond evenhandedly reviews human history on every continent since the Ice Age at a rate that emphasizes only the broadest movements of peoples and ideas. Yet his survey is binocular: one eye has the rather distant vision of the evolutionary biologist, while the other eye--and his heart--belongs to the people of New Guinea, where he has done field work for more than 30 years.
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