An essential world-building resource

If you build worlds (as so many people do), you'll be very glad you read Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel. I know it's been around for a decade or more, but that in no way diminishes its usefulness. It's one of those books that grabs hold of your brain and wrenches it a bit, and suddenly you look at processes, systems, interactions, consquences, history — humanity itself — differently. You understand better.

In case you are a stranger to this book, it sets out to explain why some cultures ended up with all the good stuff, and others ended up chronically impoverished. Diamond has an ulterior motive, about which he is quite blatant: he wants to destroy forever the idea that white people ended up with all the good stuff because non-white people were not "fit" to develop it or have it. He's a passionate anti-racist. Which I think is a good thing. But it's not why the book is so good for world-building. That's because it very specifically and in great (often, it must be said, repetitious) detail sets out the factors and processes that cause a culture to advance — or not. And you and I need to know this sort of thing if we're going to design cultures of our own, and if those cultures are going to come into conflict. Superficial, fatuous "you have and I want" conflicts are unsatisfying, particularly when we can do a little homework and produce something better, deeper, with more resonance and meaning.

And, of course, the best thing of all is that the publishers have left the serial comma in the title intact.