Slickdeals is community-supported.  We may get paid by brands for deals, including promoted items.
Missed This Deal? Get alerts when similar deals are posted.
expired
phoinix | Staff 9.7K Views
Aug 28, 2026 4:33 AM

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (Kindle eBook)

$3.00

$19

84% off
Amazon
Visit Amazon
Good Deal?
10Comments
Save
Share
Deal Details
Various Retailers have Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond Ph.D. (eBook) on sale for $2.99.

Thanks to Deal Hunter phoinix for finding this deal.

Available from the following retailers:Book Synopsis:
  • Winner of the Pulitzer Prize • New York Times Bestseller • Over Two Million Copies Sold
  • "One of the most significant projects embarked upon by any intellectual of our generation" (Gregg Easterbrook, New York Times), Guns, Germs, and Steel presents a groundbreaking, unified narrative of human history.
  • Why did Eurasians conquer, displace, or decimate Native Americans, Australians, and Africans, instead of the reverse? In this "artful, informative, and delightful" (William H. McNeill, New York Review of Books) book, a classic of our time, evolutionary biologist Jared Diamond dismantles racist theories of human history by revealing the environmental factors actually responsible for its broadest patterns.
  • The story begins 13,000 years ago, when Stone Age hunter-gatherers constituted the entire human population. Around that time, the developmental paths of human societies on different continents began to diverge greatly. Early domestication of wild plants and animals in the Fertile Crescent, China, Mesoamerica, the Andes, and other areas gave peoples of those regions a head start at a new way of life. But the localized origins of farming and herding proved to be only part of the explanation for their differing fates. The unequal rates at which food production spread from those initial centers were influenced by other features of climate and geography, including the disparate sizes, locations, and even shapes of the continents. Only societies that moved away from the hunter-gatherer stage went on to develop writing, technology, government, and organized religions as well as deadly germs and potent weapons of war. It was those societies, adventuring on sea and land, that invaded others, decimating native inhabitants through slaughter and the spread of disease.
  • A major landmark in our understanding of human societies, Guns, Germs, and Steel chronicles the way in which the modern world, and its inequalities, came to be.

Editor's Notes

Written by slickdewmaster | Staff

Original Post

Written by phoinix | Staff
Community Notes
About the Poster
Deal Details
Community Notes
About the Poster
Various Retailers have Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond Ph.D. (eBook) on sale for $2.99.

Thanks to Deal Hunter phoinix for finding this deal.

Available from the following retailers:Book Synopsis:
  • Winner of the Pulitzer Prize • New York Times Bestseller • Over Two Million Copies Sold
  • "One of the most significant projects embarked upon by any intellectual of our generation" (Gregg Easterbrook, New York Times), Guns, Germs, and Steel presents a groundbreaking, unified narrative of human history.
  • Why did Eurasians conquer, displace, or decimate Native Americans, Australians, and Africans, instead of the reverse? In this "artful, informative, and delightful" (William H. McNeill, New York Review of Books) book, a classic of our time, evolutionary biologist Jared Diamond dismantles racist theories of human history by revealing the environmental factors actually responsible for its broadest patterns.
  • The story begins 13,000 years ago, when Stone Age hunter-gatherers constituted the entire human population. Around that time, the developmental paths of human societies on different continents began to diverge greatly. Early domestication of wild plants and animals in the Fertile Crescent, China, Mesoamerica, the Andes, and other areas gave peoples of those regions a head start at a new way of life. But the localized origins of farming and herding proved to be only part of the explanation for their differing fates. The unequal rates at which food production spread from those initial centers were influenced by other features of climate and geography, including the disparate sizes, locations, and even shapes of the continents. Only societies that moved away from the hunter-gatherer stage went on to develop writing, technology, government, and organized religions as well as deadly germs and potent weapons of war. It was those societies, adventuring on sea and land, that invaded others, decimating native inhabitants through slaughter and the spread of disease.
  • A major landmark in our understanding of human societies, Guns, Germs, and Steel chronicles the way in which the modern world, and its inequalities, came to be.

Editor's Notes

Written by slickdewmaster | Staff

Original Post

Written by phoinix | Staff

Community Voting

Deal Score
+81
Good Deal

Top Comments

Join The Conversation

Share your experience with the Slickdeals community

Share information with the community. Please follow our Community Guidelines and be kind!

10 Comments

Sign up for a Slickdeals account to remove this ad.

Aug 28, 2026 3:47 PM
69 Comments
Joined May 2016
dsclotheAug 28, 2026 3:47 PM
69 Comments

Our community has rated this post as helpful. If you agree, why not thank

Took me two or three tries to finish it, but I did, and it's made a lasting impression.
--Kirkus review, which is short and positive: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/boo...and-steel/
--NYT review when it came out, which is a tiny bit longer but also positive: https://archive.nytimes.com/www.n...reevt.html
--Summary of criticisms: https://www.tosummarise.com/criti...and-steel/
--Get the ebook at your library; there's also an audiobook: https://share.libbyapp.com/title/467033
4
1
Aug 29, 2026 3:01 AM
346 Comments
Joined Oct 2007
barathrumAug 29, 2026 3:01 AM
346 Comments
This is a fantastic book. Highly recommended.
2
Aug 29, 2026 4:41 PM
6.9K Comments
Joined Mar 2013
4SKZ8Aug 29, 2026 4:41 PM
6.9K Comments
This one's a classsic
2
Aug 29, 2026 9:15 PM
88 Comments
Joined Jan 2020
DogfriendlyAug 29, 2026 9:15 PM
88 Comments
Great book.
2
Aug 29, 2026 9:16 PM
219 Comments
Joined Aug 2011
txh00kemAug 29, 2026 9:16 PM
219 Comments
Not even if free.
1
1
4
Aug 31, 2026 6:38 AM
7.2K Comments
Joined Dec 2006
megablankAug 31, 2026 6:38 AM
7.2K Comments
A book so weak criticism is censored.
1
Aug 31, 2026 1:18 PM
111 Comments
Joined Dec 2007
str1ck9Aug 31, 2026 1:18 PM
111 Comments
Quote from megablank View quoted comment :
A book so weak criticism is censored.
Any thoughts on 'Art of the Deal' while you're on your soap box?
1

Sign up for a Slickdeals account to remove this ad.

Aug 31, 2026 1:49 PM
2 Comments
Joined Sep 2016
jingieAug 31, 2026 1:49 PM
2 Comments
Opinion on this book from actual anthropologists and historians is almost uniformly negative. Entertaining read but not very useful for forming an intellectual basis for understanding history.
1
Aug 31, 2026 4:04 PM
179 Comments
Joined Nov 2015
darkcarAug 31, 2026 4:04 PM
179 Comments
Quote from jingie View quoted comment :
Opinion on this book from actual anthropologists and historians is almost uniformly negative. Entertaining read but not very useful for forming an intellectual basis for understanding history.
I watched the show this weekend and thought it was really interesting and a lot of the reasoning made sense. I had casual interest though, not any kind of expertise.

I'll look into the criticisms, they are probably interesting as well. Thanks.
Sep 5, 2026 4:50 AM
51 Comments
Joined Jul 2019
BoastfulCaribou483Sep 5, 2026 4:50 AM
51 Comments
Scrolled past, came back to add to others' comments that this is a phenomenal book that everyone should read (in addition to the critiques from experts in the field!)

Join The Conversation

Share your experience with the Slickdeals community

Share information with the community. Please follow our Community Guidelines and be kind!