Works by
Jared M. Diamond
(Writer)
[1937 - ]

New Subspecies and Records of Birds From the Karimui Basin, New Guinea (1967)

Avifauna of the Eastern Highlands of New Guinea (1972)
Publication of the Nuttall Ornithological Club, No. 12, Cambridge, Mass., pp. 438.

Fruit Consumption and Seed dispersal by New Guinea Birds (1977)
Wildlife in Papua New Guinea: Wildlife publication

Report on Bird Survey in the Proposed Vanimo Timber Area (1977)
Wildlife in Papua New Guinea: Wildlife publication

The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal (1992)
We human beings share 98 percent of our genes with chimpanzees. Yet humans are the dominant species on the planet -- having founded civilizations and religions, developed intricate and diverse forms of communication, learned science, built cities, and created breathtaking works of art -- while chimps remain animals concerned primarily with the basic necessities of survival. What is it about that two percent difference in DNA that has created such a divergence between evolutionary cousins? In this fascinating, provocative, passionate, funny, endlessly entertaining work, renowned Pulitzer Prize–winning author and scientist Jared Diamond explores how the extraordinary human animal, in a remarkably short time, developed the capacity to rule the world . . . and the means to irrevocably destroy it.

Why Is Sex Fun?: The Evolution of Human Sexuality (1997)
In Why is Sex Fun? Jared Diamond argues that, in our evolutionary history, humans’ strange sex lives were as crucial to our rise to human status as our upright posture and large brain. He explores questions such as, ‘Why are humans one of the few species to have sex in private? Why do human have sex any day of the month or year? Why are human females one of the only mammals to go through the menopause?’ Diamond concludes that, by the standards of the world’s 4,300 species, we are the ones that are bizarre.

Why is Sex Fun? is a delightfully entertaining and enlightening account of the evolutionary forces that have shaped our sex lives: of the book Diane Ackerman writes that it offers ‘fascinating reading for anyone curious about why lovers do what they do’.

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (1997) -- Winner Pulitzer Prize, the Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science, the Rhone-Poulenc Prize, and the Commonwealth Club of California's Gold Medal.
In this book, Jared Diamond convincingly argues that geographical and environmental factors shaped the modern world. Societies that had had a head start in food production advanced beyond the hunter-gatherer stage, and then developed religion --as well as nasty germs and potent weapons of war --and adventured on sea and land to conquer and decimate preliterate cultures. A major advance in our understanding of human societies, Guns, Germs, and Steel chronicles the way that the modern world came to be and stunningly dismantles racially based theories of human history.

The Birds of Northern Melanesia: Speciation, Ecology, & Biogeography (2001) by Ernst Mayr and Jared Diamond
Ernst Mayr is one of the principal architects of the "neo-Darwinian synthesis," which has been the dominant perspective in 20th century evolutionary biology. Jared Diamond is one of the most wide-ranging minds in biology, and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for "Guns, Germs, and Steel." Mayr and Diamond decided in 1970 to collaborate on an authoritative monograph presenting their data and interpretations of the evolution of the birds of the Solomon and Bismark Islands. Mayr's numerous expeditions to do fieldwork in this area, beginning in 1929 and continuing through 1976, form the core of his scientific work. Diamond has made four expeditions to the region since 1970 to fill in gaps in the data.

Why Did Human History Unfold Differently On Different Continents for the Last 13,000 Years? (2001)

Spark Notes Barnes and Noble Readers Companion: Guns, Germs, and Steel (2003)
Scholar and professor Jared Diamond made a huge splash with this fascinating but controversial book, which argues that geography and environment have almost singlehandedly determined the course of human history. Dig deeper into his contentions with the information inside this invaluable reader's handbook:

• Why did Europe colonize Africa and Asia rather than the other way around?

• Why is geography the most important factor in human history?

• How has the rest of the scientific community received Diamond's theory?

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (2005)
In his runaway bestseller Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond brilliantly examined the circumstances that allowed Western civilizations to dominate much of the world. Now he probes the other side of the equation: What caused some of the great civilizations of the past to fall into ruin, and what can we learn from their fates? Using a vast historical and geographical perspective ranging from Easter Island and the Maya to Viking Greenland and modern Montana, Diamond traces a fundamental pattern of environmental catastrophe—one whose warning signs can be seen in our modern world and that we ignore at our peril. Blending the most recent scientific advances into a narrative that is impossible to put down, Collapse exposes the deepest mysteries of the past even as it offers hope for the future.