Books published by publisher N . Y.: W. W. Norton

Book Club edition, 1963, hardcover with dust jacket--the book is like-new, except for prior owner name and price at the top of the front inside cover and the name at the top of the inside back cover, unread, unopened, and unmarked, while the dust jacket has chipping at the top & bottom spine ends, mostly at the top, and a 1/4" closed tear on the top front edge about 2" from the spine end, with 5233 at the bottom of the outside, from Norton. By Anthony Burgess.

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, commonly cited as Guns, Germs, and Steel, is a 1997 transdisciplinary non-fiction book by Jared Diamond, professor of geography and physiology at the University of California, Los Angeles. Originally published: 1997 Author: Jared Diamond LC Class: HM206.D48 1997 ISBN: 0-393-03891-2 (1st edition, hardcover) Dewey Decimal: 303.4 21 Awards: Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction, Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science

Although it is possible to compare the talents of such geniuses as Shakespeare, Goethe, and Dante, or of various scientists, artists, and inventors, one man in history stands alone by virtue of the number and variety of his talents. It can be said with little argument that Leonardo da Vinci was gifted with more creative abilities than any other human being. Painter, sculptor, architect, mathematician, musician, astronomer, geologist, botanist, philosopher, and engineer - da Vinci was the prototype of the "Renaissance man." A brilliant pioneer in the field of science, he anticipated the invention of the airplane and the submarine, for example; the studies in his notebooks were so far ahead of his time that he had to write in code to avoid discovery and punishment for "heresy." His paintings and sketches alone rank him in the forefront of the world's great men. Fortunately, Leonardo lived in an age and a place - Renaissance Italy - where the intellectual was more highly honored than either the military man or the politician. His own nature antagonized many and brought him tragedy, but at the same time it carried him to such heights that even in his own era he was imitated, admired, and followed by most of his fellow artists. Today, we can only guess how much further and more quickly our civilization would have advanced had Leonardo's notebooks not been buried away, unread, for centuries. We can only marvel at the brain that conceived such ideas.