Jared Diamond, author of the Pulitzer Prize Winning, National Best Selling book Guns, Germs and Steel, summarizes his book by saying the following: "History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples' environments, not because of biological differences among peoples themselves." Guns, Germs and Steel are historical literature that documents Jared Diamond's views on how the world as we know it developed. However, is his thesis that environmental factors contribute so greatly to the development of society and culture valid? Not without flaws, Jared Diamond makes many claims throughout his work, and provides numerous examples and evidence to support his theories. In this essay, I will summarize Jared Diamond's accounts of world history and evolution of culture.
Name: Course: Instructor: Date: “Guns, Germs, and Steel” by Jared Diamond The key theme of Jared Diamond’s book “Guns, Germs, and Steel” is the history of societies and cultures as well as their place in that history. In 1998, it won the prize for a nonfiction book and became the national best seller that year. Diamond caught the attention of the public by his book with a fascinating account of more than 13000 years of human evolution and development. He contends that the lapses in power and technology in the human societies originated from differentiated environments. The author argues that while cultural or genetic make-up has favored Eurasians regarding resistance to endemic diseases and development of writing earlier than on the other
One interesting fact to remember is that we put Saddam Hussein into power back in the 1070's when he opposed the soviets. So we gave him millions of dollars, weapons, and tactics to defeat the soviets. Hussein however used this power, weapons, and money to make himself a dictator figure over his people in Iraq and a long period of oppression ensued. All of the problems we have spent $4 trillions dollars on were caused by none other than ourselves back in the cold war. The Bush administration underestimated how long the Iraq War would take, and the administration expected only a two year operation and a price tag of a little over $100
Why Nations go to War “Mortals made these decisions. They made them in fear and in trembling, but they made them nonetheless” (Stoessinger 4). This is something that Dr. John G. Stoessinger implies in his book Why Nations go to War. Stoessinger organized his book to look at the events that led to specific wars of the twentieth century. He discusses prime wars such as, World War I, World War II, Korean War, Vietnam, and the wars in the Middle East.
Richard M. Nixon An American Enigma By Herbert S. Parmet Book Reviewed By: Yue Zhang ID: 4939 History 112 5/5/2012 “Richard M. Nixon, An American Enigma” by Herber S. Parmet delineate a life story of Richard Nixon by using sources from other biographers and his own confrontation with the president, Richard Nixon. Parmet marked a time of America where Richard Nixon was fighting against the communists and downfall from Watergate, which sets a question on his fundamentals and ethics toward the United States. The author titled the book “An American Enigma” not only because Richard M. Nixon was the most enigmatic presidents in America, but also because burglary of Watergate unfinished Nixon’s goal as a president, puzzling his undone work.
Angela DiGioia Geography Professor Lucibello 9 April 2013 Guns, Germs, and Steel: Jared Diamond’s “Big Ideas” to Explain Underdevelopment In Jared Diamond’s, Guns, Germs, and Steel, he attempts to explain the factors that contribute to the underdevelopment of certain continents and regions other than the theory of superiority that he strongly rejects. “The explanation based on race is absurd,” Diamond states in the film. The issue of believing that people in underdeveloped countries are simply “not as smart” has no supporting evidence to it. Jared Diamond actually suggests that people in those underdeveloped areas may actually be smarter because they simply have to be in order to survive in their conditions and circumstances. In an interview with PBS, Diamond states that two of the largest factors contributing to the explanation of what the sources of underdeveloped and inequality in the contemporary world are the differences in availability of wild plants and animals suitable for domestication, and the difference in the shapes or orientations of continents.
Guns, Germs and Steel is a three – part documentary that was shown on both PBS and National Geographic channels. The author of this documentary was written by Jared Diamond and was released in 2003. There is also a best – selling book with the same name and author, which was released in 1997. The main question that is being answered throughout the documentary is mainly why some parts of the world have become rich powerful while other parts remain underprivileged? While there is no clear answer right now, author, Jared Diamond travels to a part of the world to search for “the roots of inequality.” Diamond discards some of the discriminatory philosophies of natural and cultural dominance or inadequacy, but rather focusing more on how environmental
This caused a huge gap between continental differences and why history turned out the way it did. Diamond attempts to prove his theory on the evolutionary
Chelsea Hardin Professor Benton Composition 101 10 October 2014 Two Men, One Goal: Comparison of Adolf Hitler and Napoleon Bonaparte Adolf Hitler and Napoleon Bonaparte are two names recognized by most people. These two men, from two different time periods and two different countries were alike in many ways, yet different. They were both military dictators who wanted one thing. They both wanted to build an empire across Europe. They had different ways of going about it, and succeeded for awhile before being brought down.
His political party was Republican serving only two terms, as he was assassinated on April 15, 1865. Abraham Lincoln is the most influential President in the United States because he put and kept the union from Civil war, enacted the Homestead Act, and crafted the thirteenth amendment, which ended slavery. Sothern leaders began to threaten about leaving the union, because of Republican plan to end slavery. The Civil War began on April 12, 1861, as forces from the