Kim Marshall has written a 14-page summary of Jared Diamond's award-winning book, "Guns, Germs, and Steel", suitable for high-school world history classes and other readers intrigued with why the Western Europeans took over the world (spoiler alert: it's not because they were smarter), is available free at https://marshallmemo.com/articles/%20GGS%20May%2030%202016.pdf. 

Kim Marshall is the well-known, highly respected educator who is the creator of The Marshall Memo.  

The Marshall Memo, published since 2003, is designed to keep principals, teachers, superintendents, and other educators very well-informed on current research and best practices in the field. Kim Marshall, drawing on his experience as a teacher, principal, central office administrator, consultant, and writer, lightens the load of busy educators by serving as their "designated reader."

To produce the Marshall Memo, Kim subscribes to 64 carefully-chosen publications and looks through scores of articles each week and selects 5-10 that have the greatest potential to improve teaching, leadership, and learning. He then writes a brief summary of each article, provides e-links to full articles if they're  available, highlights a few striking quotes, and e-mails the Memo to subscribers every Tuesday (with the exception of a two-week mid-summer vacation). Subscribers can also listen to a podcast recording of the Memo or read it in HTML format on a smartphone or tablet.

What do subscribers gain from the 20 minutes it takes to read the Marshall Memo? For one thing, they feel less guilty about not getting to all those journals piled up on their desks. More importantly, they tap into a rich vein of ideas and resources that can help them be more effective. Some Memo summaries reaffirm what practitioners are already doing well; some boost an idea higher up the "to-do" list; and some are genuinely new and take readers in a different direction. Reading the Memo provides top-notch professional development and keeps educators on the cutting edge - for only a dollar a week!

Many Memo readers clip and share selected articles with colleagues, sparking discussions on specific topics, or have their whole staff read a Memo summary "live" in a meeting and then discuss it in small groups or all together. Discussion protocols are very helpful when educators meet to discuss articles. 

Here is what four subscribers said about the Marshall Memo (see "What readers say" for additional quotes):

• "Kim is brilliant at doing an accurate précis of dense material and delivering it in a highly readable package that arrives without fail every week."
• "Exceptionally clear, succinct, yet comprehensive summaries of the articles that are most relevant."
• "An extraordinary resource for the busy educator."
• "There's no better way to be kept abreast of best practices and research than reading the informative and lively Marshall Memo."

In addition to receiving a new Memo each week, subscribers have password access to the Members' Area of this website, where it's easy to download back issues and search the archive (which now has more than 6,000 article summaries from the last 12+ years) by author, topic, title, headline, publication, or grade level.

For more info, click here.