Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies

This book gives a phenomenal macro-historic view of the developments of the continents and their people. The cultural, environmental, and agricultural context is stellar, and coherent and has shaped my understanding of how the world has been molded in the past 1000s of years. The reason for the lack of a fifth star is that I feel that it was a little overly verbose. This is more about the fact that I may not be the target audience for a book that goes deeper into the weeds than I always care to. This work pays tremendous respect to historic academic practices, but that may not be what the casually interested in history (like me) is always searching for.