Guns, Germs and Steel

Published in 1997, Guns, Germs, and Steel examines 13,000 years of human development. At its core lies a deceptively straightforward question: What caused certain regions to achieve technological sophistication while others remained technologically simpler? Diamond dismisses theories based on innate intellectual differences between populations. His thesis centers on environmental factors—climate patterns, biological resources, and geological conditions—as the primary drivers behind varying rates of societal advancement.