Jared Mason Diamond was born on September 10, 1937 in Boston, MA. He is a
professor, ornithologist (bird watcher), geographer, historian, pianist, environmentalist,
anthropologist, biologist, and author of numerous articles and books on scientific
topics. He has written more than ten books.
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies was published in 1997. The
book was awarded the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction and the Aventis
Prize for Best Science Book. The National Geographic Society made the book into
a documentary, and it was aired by PBS in 2005. The book asks the question:
why do Eurasian people have a history of conquering or dislodging native people from
the Americas, Australia, and Africa? The answer proposed is that it is not because
of any genetic characteristic. Instead, it is because of the features of the Eurasian
continent, with its diversity of plants and animals, people, and technologies
(and even diseases) for long distances. The New York Review of Books called
it "artful, informative, and delightful . . . There is nothing like a radically new
angle of vision for bringing out unsuspected dimensions of a subject, and this
is what Jared Diamond has done."