Guns, Germs and Steel

I've just finished reading it. It's the grand sweep of history (and prehistory) from 50,000 feet. It asks the question, why did Europeans colonize Africa and the Americas and not the reverse? It finds the answer largely in geography and serendipity, and not in differences between peoples. As such is a powerful anti-racist argument. I learned a lot about the origins and diffusion of food production and the powerful effect it has had on the development of diverse cultures.

• Minerva catalog entry
• At Amazon
• Some paragraphs I tagged while reading it.
• There are no footnotes, but a useful "further reading" section.