Diamond has written scores of academic peer-reviewed articles for publications such as the scientific journal
Nature. He has also written scores of
popular science articles in publications such as
Discover, as well as several bestselling popular books, notably
The Third Chimpanzee (1991);
Guns, Germs, and Steel (1997, awarded a
Pulitzer Prize);
Collapse (2005),
The World Until Yesterday (2012), and
Upheaval (2019).
For a full list, see .
The Third Chimpanzee (1991) Diamond's first popular book,
The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal (1991), examines
human evolution and its relevance to the modern world, incorporating evidence from
anthropology,
evolutionary biology,
genetics, ecology, and
linguistics. The book traces how humans evolved to be so different from other animals, despite sharing over 98% of our DNA with our closest animal relatives, the chimpanzees. The book also examines the animal origins of language, art, agriculture, smoking and drug use, and other apparently uniquely human attributes. It was well received by critics and won the 1992
Rhône-Poulenc Prize for Science Books and the
Los Angeles Times Book Prize.
Guns, Germs, and Steel (1997) His second and best known popular science book,
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, was published in 1997. It asks why Eurasian peoples conquered or displaced
Native Americans,
Australians, and Africans, and not the other way around. It argues that this outcome was not due to genetic advantages of Eurasian peoples themselves but instead to features of the Eurasian continent, in particular, its high diversity of wild plant and animal species suitable for
domestication and its east/west major axis that favored the spread of those domesticates, people, technologies—and diseases—for long distances with little change in latitude. The first part of the book focuses on reasons why only a few species of wild plants and animals proved suitable for domestication. The second part discusses how local food production based on those domesticates led to the development of dense and stratified human populations, writing, centralized political organization, and
epidemic infectious diseases. The third part compares the development of food production and of human societies among different continents and world regions.
Guns, Germs, and Steel became an international best-seller, was translated into 33 languages, and received several awards, including a
Pulitzer Prize, an
Aventis Prize for Science Books A television documentary series based on the book was produced by the
National Geographic Society in 2005. The book is controversial among anthropologists.
Collapse (2005) Diamond's next book,
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, published in 2005, examines a range of past societies in an attempt to identify why they either collapsed or continued to thrive and considers what contemporary societies can learn from these historical examples. As in
Guns, Germs, and Steel, he argues against explanations for the failure of past societies based primarily on cultural factors, instead focusing on ecology. Among the societies mentioned in the book are the
Norse and
Inuit of
Greenland, the
Maya, the
Anasazi, the indigenous people of
Rapa Nui (Easter Island), Japan, Haiti, the
Dominican Republic, and modern
Montana. The book concludes by asking why some societies make disastrous decisions, how big businesses affect the environment, what our principal environmental problems are today, and what individuals can do about those problems. Like
Guns, Germs, and Steel,
Collapse was translated into dozens of languages, became an international best-seller, and was the basis of a television documentary produced by the National Geographic Society.
Collapse was also nominated for the
Royal Society Prize for Science Books. though he did not win a third time. Fifteen archaeologists, cultural anthropologists, and historians from the
American Anthropological Association criticized Diamond's methods and conclusions, working together with the larger association to publish the book
Questioning Collapse as a counter to Diamond's claims. In response, Diamond, as an editor at the time for the journal
Nature, published an official review in the journal negatively covering the book, without mentioning that the book was a critique of his own work. The authors and the publisher,
Cambridge University Press, called out Diamond for his
conflict of interest on the subject.
"Vengeance is Ours" controversy (2008) In 2008, Diamond published an article in
The New Yorker entitled "Vengeance Is Ours", describing the role of revenge in tribal warfare in
Papua New Guinea. A year later, two indigenous people mentioned in the article filed a lawsuit against Diamond and
The New Yorker, claiming the article defamed them. In 2013,
The Observer reported that the lawsuit "was withdrawn by mutual consent after the sudden death of their lawyer."
Natural Experiments of History (2010) In 2010, Diamond co-edited (with
James Robinson)
Natural Experiments of History, a collection of seven case studies illustrating the
multidisciplinary and comparative approach to the study of history that he advocates. The book's title stems from the fact that it is not possible to study history by the preferred methods of the laboratory sciences, i.e., by controlled experiments comparing replicated human societies as if they were test tubes of bacteria. Instead, one must look at natural experiments in which human societies that are similar in many respects have been historically perturbed. The book's afterword classifies natural experiments, discusses the practical difficulties of studying them, and offers suggestions on how to address those difficulties.
The World Until Yesterday (2012) In
The World Until Yesterday, published in 2012, Diamond asks what the western world can learn from
traditional societies. It surveys 39 traditional small-scale societies of farmers and hunter-gatherers with respect to how they deal with universal human problems. The problems discussed include dividing space, resolving disputes, bringing up children, treatment of elders, dealing with dangers, formulating religions, learning multiple languages, and remaining healthy. The book suggests that some practices of traditional societies could be usefully adopted in the modern industrial world today, either by individuals or else by society as a whole.
Upheaval (2019) In
Upheaval: How Nations Cope with Crisis and Change Diamond examines whether nations can find lessons during crises in a way like people do. The nations considered are Finland, Japan, Chile, Indonesia, Germany, Australia, and the U.S. Diamond identifies four modern threats: nuclear weapons,
climate change, limited resources, and extreme inequality.
Anand Giridharadas, reviewing for
The New York Times, claimed the book contained many factual inaccuracies.
Daniel Immerwahr, reviewing for
The New Republic, reports that Diamond has "jettisoned statistical analysis" and the associated rigour, even by the standards of his earlier books, which have themselves sometimes been challenged on this basis. ==Personal life==