By: Bill Dobrenen on May 10, 2014
In his award winning book Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond attempts to discuss the history of everyone over the past 13,000 years.[1] What I most appreciated about this book was Diamond’s attempt to give a history of the World that was not limited to Western history. This was a welcome change from our readings…
By: Mitch Arbelaez on May 10, 2014
From the obscurity of prehistoric beginnings, humanity arose and spread throughout the world conquering and being conquered. The factors leading up to who would become the conquerors and who would be the conquered ones is the main question that Jared Diamond gives a heroic attempt in answering throughout his book Guns, Germs, and Steel: The…
By: Sandy Bils on May 9, 2014
Why were some civilization able to create a hegemony status for themselves and why did others fail and were only able to play a subordinate role? This and other questions are discussed in the book “Guns Germs and Steel – The Fates of Human Societies“ by Pulitzer prize winner Jared Diamonds. One of the traces,…
By: Richard Rhoads on May 9, 2014
Shortly after my college days I interviewed and was hired at a church roughly two hours from where I grew up. When I originally heard of the open position and the town it was located in, I remember thinking, “I’ve never heard of this place.” In my first attempt to visit this large town/small city,…
By: Miriam Mendez on May 9, 2014
Who would have thought that a walk on the beach, studying birds, would lead to a question that would penetrate the heart of a great mystery of human history. It is obvious that Jared Diamond was not expecting to encounter such a question as he walked along a beach on the tropical island of New…
By: Michael Badriaki on May 9, 2014
I contemplated naming this post “Thank you, Yali and Diamond”. There is a lot to reflect on in Diamond’s book “Guns, germs and steel”. Even though the book is steeply grounded in the theory and science of human evolution, the author, masterfully lays out data that shows how modern history has been shaped by conquest.…
By: Telile Fikru Badecha on May 9, 2014
The title of this week’s reading “Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies” really drew my interest to the author’s theory of the history and prehistory of human development. Jared Diamond compellingly writes about the development of human societies for the last thirteen thousand years.He points out that all human beings were hunter-gatherers…
By: Carol McLaughlin on May 9, 2014
More than forty years ago a New Guinean named Yali posed a question to a biologist as they walked along. “Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?”[1] Jared Diamond, the biologist and author of Guns,…
By: Cedrick Valrie on May 9, 2014
When I was a child, my family did not own a car. Getting around was a chore that we often experienced, yet resolve came in various forms, such as family friends with cars, city buses, and taxis. Such modes of transportation made it easier for my family to acquire basic needs like food, clothes, and shelter by…
By: Julie Dodge on May 9, 2014
In 1952, a young Ernesto Guevera and his friend, Alberto Granado, set off on a transcontinental motorcycle ride from Buenos Aires, Argentina, to Caracas, Venezuela. Guevera was a semester shy of completing his medical degree. Both intended to work for a time in a leper colony in Peru as part of their journey. The…
By: rhbaker275 on May 9, 2014
Jared Diamond was awarded the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for Journalism – General Nonfiction for his book, Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies.[1]The award citation chronicles the worthiness of Diamond’s work: No scientist brings more experience from the laboratory and field, none thinks more deeply about social issues or addresses them with greater…
By: Deve Persad on May 8, 2014
Last week, two of the guys from our leadership team, and myself, attended a one day conference on the local impact of Human Trafficking. For many of the one hundred people in attendance curiosity turned into surprise and then shame by the end of the day. Curiosity because many in attendance wouldn’t have given thought…
By: Ashley Goad on May 8, 2014
(Note: I wrote this while sitting under my favorite mango tree in Haiti!) Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Society by Jared Diamond may be the first book I have read completely from cover-to-cover in quite awhile. Perhaps it was because I was overcome by the narrative storytelling over the course of 13,000…
By: Phil Smart on May 8, 2014
For one year I studied Human Geography in a Master’s program at the University of Kansas. I was home for a year’s furlough from mission service in Brazil and was encouraged to study but ran out of money so never completed the degree. However, while at KU, I was exposed to Environmental Determinism, a precursor…
By: Mark Steele on May 8, 2014
Jared Diamond in in his book Guns, Germs and Steel attempts to answer the question why some societies advanced much quicker than others throughout history. He tracks the history of man 4 million years ago in Africa and 1.8 million years ago in a Southeast Asian Island in Java to the oldest fossils discovered of…
By: Liz Linssen on May 8, 2014
For Diamond, history reveals a story of inequalities among the development of the modern world and therefore demands an explanation. He asks the important question, “[W]hy did human development proceed at such different rates on different continents?” [i] He goes on, “In 11,000 BC, all societies everywhere were bands of preliterate hunter-gatherers with stone tools.…
By: Sam Stephens on May 8, 2014
Whether it concerns an individual, or a family, communities or nations, the most pressing question for humanity is this: What does the future hold? Then, the most frequently asked questions are: Where do we go from here? Where are we headed to? How do we get to where we desire to be? It isn’t very…
By: Richard Volzke on May 8, 2014
The book, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, was filled with controversial facts. While the author does appropriately state some of the factors that trigger societal development, Scripture doesn’t support some of the facts and statements that he provided. There was a large emphasis on evolution, however the author did not fully…
By: Fred Fay on May 8, 2014
Quite a few years ago I accompanied a group from the church I was working for on a missions trip to Ensenada. We passed through beautiful San Diego with palm trees, green foliage and modern buildings. Then as we passed over the border into Mexico everything changed. The ground was brown and barren. There were…
By: John Woodward on May 8, 2014
My confession: I have a Masters in history. Actually, I am a student of a very tiny part of history, which encompasses only modern Europe. I know that my focus is extremely narrow, but after reading Gun, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond, I am extremely humbled by how very…
