Jared Diamond explores whether history’s winners owed more to geography than to innate brilliance. He traces how a lucky haul of domesticable species in Eurasia kick-started farming, dense populations - as well as the germs, writing, and metallurgy that follow.

Because Eurasia runs east–west, crops and animals travelled across similar climates; whereas in the Americas and Africa, north–south barriers slowed that diffusion. Through contrasts from Polynesian islands to New Guinea and the Americas, he shows how environment set early starting lines, then path dependence and feedback loops did the rest—turning immunity into a weapon, surplus into bureaucracy, and steel into empire.

You may not agree with every leap, but the frame is testable and bracingly anti-racial. This work reframes inequality without moralising, and helps you think more clearly about power, development, and chance in human affairs.