Jared Diamond

In addition to teaching geography at UCLA, researching the birds of New Guinea and the Southwest Pacific Islands, and promoting the practice of sustainable environmental policies to leaders around the world, JARED DIAMOND is also the author of bestselling books about evolution and human history. Diamond studied physiology at Harvard and Cambridge, before narrowing his research to the cellular and molecular mechanisms of the gall bladder. It was on a summer trip to New Guinea in 1964, however, that he first began to carefully consider the questions that would intrigue him for the next half-century: why did New Guinea’s extremely intelligent and resourceful indigenous peoples have no writing, chiefs or steel tools? His Pulitzer Prize-winning Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies was an attempt to answer that question. Diamond is the author of several other books on geography and evolutionary biology, including Why is Sex Fun?: The Evolution of Human Sexuality and Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. The Third Chimpanzee for Young People is his first book adapted for younger audiences. Diamond lives in Los Angeles.