Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond. I've been curious about the world for as long as I can remember. When I was young, I used to question my parents about the inner workings of almost everything, from household appliances to world politics. At some point I remember talking to my dad about the origins of humans, I think after having read or heard somewhere that African apes are somehow our ancestors. That made me think: Isn't Africa really poor nowadays? How come, if the first humans lived there, and not here in Europe? And what about America? Don't they have "native" peoples there as well? How did they get there, if today that journey takes more than 10 hours on a plane? Unfortunately (but understandably), my dads knowledge in anthropology was exhausted quite quickly, and I was not much the wiser.