ABSTRACT
Debates in geography, politics, and economics turn on some of the points Jared Diamond raises in Guns, Germs, and Steel, even if only implicitly. There are key parallels between Diamond's 2005 book Collapse and the important United Nations publication A Guide to the World's Resources 2005. Diamond's work played an important role in helping define some of the problems historically tackled by economists who address developing economies. One of the most important works in economic development to embrace Diamond's perspective of the relationship between geography and economic outcomes is by the economists John Gallup, Jeffrey Sachs, and Andrew Mellinger. The most prominent thinker today who shares Diamond's point of view about the importance of the environment on human outcomes is the economist Jeffrey Sachs. Unlike Diamond, Sachs is not interested in the consequences of 13,000 years of history, but the two share a key interest in how environmental conditions shape and constrain the choices societies make.
