"No scientist brings more experience from the laboratory and field, none thinks more deeply about social issues or addresses them with greater clarity, than Jared Diamond as illustrated by Guns, Germs, and Steel. In this remarkably readable book he shows how history and biology can enrich one another to produce a deeper understanding of the human condition." —Edward O. Wilson, Pellegrino University Professor, Harvard University "Serious, groundbreaking biological studies of human history only seem to come along once every generation or so. . .. Now Jared Diamond must be added to their select number. . . . Diamond meshes technological mastery with historical sweep, anecdotal delight with broad conceptual vision, and command of sources with creative leaps. No finer work of its kind has been published this year, or for many past." —Martin Sieff, Washington Times "[Diamond 's] masterful synthesis is a refreshingly unconventional history informed by anthropology, behavioral ecology, linguistics, epidemiology, archeology, and technological development." —Publishers Weekly (starred review) "[Jared Diamond] is broadly erudite, writes in a style that pleasantly expresses scientific concepts in vernacular American English, and deals almost exclusively in questions that should interest everyone concerned about how humanity has developed. . . . [He] has done us all a great favor by supplying a rock-solid alternative to the racist answer. . . . A wonderfully interesting book." —Alfred W. Crosby, Los Angeles Times "Fascinating and extremely important.... [A] synopsis doesn 't do credit to the immense subtlety of this book." —David Brown, Washington Post Book World "Deserves the attention of anyone concerned with the history of mankind at its most fundamental level. It is an epochal work. Diamond has written
a summary of human history that can be accounted, for the time being, as Darwinian in its authority." —Thomas M. Disch, New Leader "A
References: 3 entrances into that controversial literature: Colin Renfrew, Archaeology and Language: The Puzzle of Indo-European Origins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), and J FURTHER READINGS Oliver Dunn and James Kelley, Jr., The Diario of Christopher Columbus 's First Voyage to America, 1492-1493 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1989)