"Authors are regularly asked by journalists to summarize a long book in one sentence. For this book, here is such a sentence: 'History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples' environments, not because of biological differences among peoples themselves." Prologue, pg. 25

"Hence the availability of domestic plants and animals ultimately explains why empires, literacy, and steel weapons developed earlier in Eurasia and later, or not at all, on other continents." Chapter 4, pg. 92

"Plant domestication may be defined as growing a plant and thereby, consciously or unconsciously, causing it to change genetically from its wild ancestor in ways making it more useful to human consumers." Chapter 7, pg. 114

"Eurasian peoples happened to inherit many more species of domesticable large wild mammalian herbivores than did peoples of the other continents." Chapter 9, pg. 174

"The importance of lethal microbes in human history is well illustrated by Europeans' conquest and...