ABSTRACT
Jared Diamond's book Guns, Germs, and Steel examines the ultimate causes behind broad patterns of history. He attempts a scientific approach to human history, piecing together ideas from diverse disciplines to establish a broad theory about human development. Jared Diamond was born in Boston in 1937. His mother was a musician and amateur linguist, his father the associate chief of staff of the Children's Hospital at Harvard Medical School and a specialist in blood diseases. World War II was an important factor in shaping Diamond's world-view. He traveled through Europe after his PhD and learned how people's experiences of the war had shaped their lives. Diamond wrote Guns, Germs, and Steel in the mid-1990s. For much of his life- from 1945 to 1989- world politics had been shaped by the Cold War and the antagonistic relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union.
