《枪炮、病菌与钢铁》

在这本荣获过普利策奖并“展现作者的巧心慧思与博学多闻，而且生动有趣”（威廉·H·麦克尼尔在《纽约书评》中如是说）的书籍中，贾德·戴蒙对地理和环境因素在现代社会形成过程中的重大作用力进行了强有力的论证。粮食的生产推动人类社会从狩猎时代向高一层社会进化，随后出现了宗教、可怕的病菌和杀伤力惊人的战争武器，人们翻山越岭远渡重洋，只为了征服和残害史前文明。《枪炮、病菌和钢铁》是我们对人类社会理解的一大进步，重新记录了现代社会的形成方式，也驳斥了以人种为基础的人类历史理论。

Guns,Germs and Steel

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize,this ＂artful, informative,and delightful＂ （William H. McNeill, New York Review of Books） book, Jared Diamond convincingly argues that geographical and environmental factors shaped the modern world.Societies that had had a head start in food production advanced beyond the hunteratherer stage, and then developed religion - as well as nasty germs and potent weapons of war - and adventured on sea and land to conquer and decimate preliterate cultures. A major advance in our understanding of human societies, Guns, Germs, and Steel chronicles the way that the modern world came to be and stunningly dismantles racially based theories of human history.