Domestic drama to human history: Gripping reads chosen by Ade Adepitan, Gabby Logan, Kerry Godliman and Tom Read Wilson
On Between the Covers this week, Sara Cox's guests recommend a sweeping global history that targets geography and other factors to explain development, two timely stories of family drama and conflict, and The Moon's a Balloon, David Niven's classic memoir of Hollywood's golden age.
NOTE: This article is a republication- Source: bbc.co.uk (Between the Covers Book Club).
Ade Adepitan - Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond
The cover says: Why has human history unfolded so differently across the globe? And what can it teach us about our current crisis? Jared Diamond puts the case that geography and biogeography, not race, moulded the contrasting fates of Europeans, Asians, Native Americans, sub-Saharan Africans, and aboriginal Australians. An ambitious synthesis of history, biology, ecology and linguistics, Guns, Germs and Steel is a ground-breaking and humane work of popular science that can provide expert insight into our modern world.
The book tells the story of the last 10-15,000 years of human history, and why certain civilizations were able to progress faster than others.Ade Adepitan
Ade says: “The book is basically trying to tell the story of the last ten or fifteen thousand years of human history. It's about who we are, and how we got to where we are today - why certain civilizations were able to progress faster than others - and what were the determining factors?
He talks about Eurasia, which is Europe, Asia and North Africa. He looks at geology, the fact that we were able to grow more crops than in Sub-Saharan Africa and that helped us come together in larger groups, which meant we shared knowledge and then progressed.
And the germs, from all the colds that we got, helped the Spanish go and beat the Incas. They gave them flu - they come over with an army of maybe a few hundred and they destroy a civilization of a million people mainly because of the flu.
I definitely recommend it. It just grips you because it's about us. You know what I mean?”
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