Civilization
Random House
1998
480
This book answers the most obvious, the most important, yet the most difficult question about human history: why history unfolded so differently on different continents. 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 one of the most important and humane works of popular science.
Is a superior culture the reason for Western dominance of the world over the past two centuries? Or was it just circumstance?
This book has the answers. It surprised me in a way and yet what I read made immediate sense.
Another must read. I read it after Collapse by the same author and am glad I did.