This is one of my most favorite books and I highly recommend that you grab a copy for yourself. Months ago, I was killing time in a Chicago airport by walking around a bookstore. I was attracted by the cover, so I picked it up and started reading a few pages. I was hooked right away.

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies is a book by Jared Diamond, professor of physiology at UCLA. In 1998 it won a Pulitzer Prize and the Aventis Prize for best science book. A documentary based on the book was broadcast on PBS in July, 2005, produced by the National Geographic Society.

According to the author, an alternative title would be: "A short history about everyone for the last 13,000 years". But the book is not merely an account of the past; it attempts to explain why Western civilization, as a whole, has survived and conquered others, while refuting the belief that Western hegemony is due to any form of Western intellectual or moral superiority. Diamond argues that the gaps in power and technology between human societies do not reflect cultural or racial differences, but rather originate in environmental differences powerfully amplified by various positive feedback loops.

The basic theory of the book is that before anyone developed agriculture, people lived as hunter-gatherers, as some still do. The book argues that Western civilization is not so much a product of ingenuity, but of opportunity. That is, civilization is not created out of sheer will or intelligence, but is more like a house of cards, each level dependent upon the levels below it.

Click here for the PBS program based on the book.