Book Review - Guns, Germs, and Steel
Jared Diamond’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book, “Guns, Germs, and Steel” begins with a question posed by a New Guinea politician named Yali: “Why do white men have so much cargo [i.e., steel tools and other products of civilization], and we New Guineans have so little?” The book attempts to answer this question by uncovering the historical and evolutionary reasons for the vast wealth disparities between nations. Diamond’s answer to the question is summarized as follows: “History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples’ environments, not because of biological differences among peoples themselves....