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63
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
73/100Critics
17/100Scholars
100/100Author:
David Graeber, David Wengrow
Publisher:
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Date:
November 9, 2021
This volume by anthropology professor David Graeber, who died in 2020, and archaeology professor David Wengrow upends conventional notions of ancient humans as uncivilized, primitive and childlike. Understanding that our human ancestors lived in much more sophisticated social arrangements than standard history allows, the authors argue, opens new paths to make sense of human history today, including the origins of farming, property, cities, democracy, slavery and civilization itself.
What The Reviewers Say
... a fascinating, radical, and playful entry into a seemingly exhaustively well-trodden genre, the grand evolutionary history of humanity.
... a profuse and antic account of how we came to take that old narrative for granted and why we might be better off if we let it go.
... what a gift it is, no less ambitious a project than its subtitle claims.
... a work of dizzying ambition, one that seeks to rescue stateless societies from the condescension with which they’re usually treated. Yet it succeeds better in uprooting conventional wisdom than in laying down a narrative of its own. The result is a book that is both thrilling and exasperating, showcasing the promise and the perils of the anarchist approach to history.
