A review by rossbm
The Dawn of Everything by David Wengrow, David Graeber
4.0
(read as ebook)
I really like this book, but it fell a bit short of 4 stars. The main thesis is that there is no "progression" ,"ladder" or "direction" in terms of how society is organized, especially in terms of complexity and hierarchy. Humans have always experimented with different ways of interacting and organizing ourselves. The thing that distinguishes the current period is that we have become "stuck" in one of doing things. The authors don't really lay out why this might be, but I suppose it comes down to globalization. We have one large Earth spanning culture now, even though things do differ from place to place.
There's a lot of speculation in this book and a bit tedious, over detailed, at times, but though provoking. Highly recommend and might be worth a reread.
I really like this book, but it fell a bit short of 4 stars. The main thesis is that there is no "progression" ,"ladder" or "direction" in terms of how society is organized, especially in terms of complexity and hierarchy. Humans have always experimented with different ways of interacting and organizing ourselves. The thing that distinguishes the current period is that we have become "stuck" in one of doing things. The authors don't really lay out why this might be, but I suppose it comes down to globalization. We have one large Earth spanning culture now, even though things do differ from place to place.
There's a lot of speculation in this book and a bit tedious, over detailed, at times, but though provoking. Highly recommend and might be worth a reread.