NATIONAL BESTSELLER NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Renowned activist and public intellectual David Graeber teams up with professor of comparative archaeology David Wengrow to deliver a trailblazing account of human history, challenging our most fundamental assumptions about social evolution--from the development of agriculture and cities to the emergence of "the state," political violence, and social inequality--and revealing new possibilities for human emancipation. For generations, our remote ancestors have been cast as ...
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NATIONAL BESTSELLER NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Renowned activist and public intellectual David Graeber teams up with professor of comparative archaeology David Wengrow to deliver a trailblazing account of human history, challenging our most fundamental assumptions about social evolution--from the development of agriculture and cities to the emergence of "the state," political violence, and social inequality--and revealing new possibilities for human emancipation. For generations, our remote ancestors have been cast as primitive and childlike--either free and equal innocents, or thuggish and warlike. Civilization, we are told, could only be achieved by sacrificing those original freedoms, or alternatively, by taming our baser instincts. Graeber and Wengrow show how such theories first emerged in the eighteenth century as a conservative reaction to powerful critiques of European society posed by Indigenous observers and intellectuals. Revisiting this encounter has startling implications for how we make sense of human history today, including the origins of farming, property, cities, democracy, slavery, and civilization itself. Drawing on path-breaking research in archaeology and anthropology, the authors show how history becomes a far more interesting place once we learn to throw off our conceptual shackles and perceive what's really there. If humans did not spend 95% of their evolutionary past in tiny bands of hunter-gatherers, what were they doing all that time? If agriculture, and cities, did not mean a plunge into hierarchy and domination, then what kinds of social and economic organization did they lead to? What was really happening during the periods that we usually describe as the emergence of "the state"? The answers are often unexpected, and suggest that the course of human history may be less set in stone, and more full of playful, hopeful possibilities, than we tend to assume. The Dawn of Everything fundamentally transforms our understanding of the human past and offers a path toward imagining new forms of freedom, new ways of organizing society. This is a monumental book of formidable intellectual range, animated by curiosity, moral vision, and a faith in the power of direct action.
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Add this copy of Dawn of Everything, the to cart. $32.95, new condition, Sold by Russell Books rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Victoria, BC, CANADA, published 2023 by Signal Books.
Add this copy of The Dawn of Everything a New History of Humanity to cart. $32.95, new condition, Sold by A Good Read rated 3.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Toronto, ON, CANADA, published 2023 by Signal Books.
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Seller's Description:
New. 0771049846. A Good Read ships from Toronto and Niagara Falls, NY-customers outside of North America please allow two to three weeks for delivery.; 5.18 X 1.8 X 8.05 inches; 712 pages.
Add this copy of The Dawn of Everything a New History of Humanity to cart. $32.99, new condition, Sold by A Good Read rated 3.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Toronto, ON, CANADA, published 2023 by Signal Books.
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
New. 0771049846. A Good Read ships from Toronto and Niagara Falls, NY-customers outside of North America please allow two to three weeks for delivery.; 5.18 X 1.8 X 8.05 inches; 712 pages.
This is an astonishing novel. Well written, compelling, full of surprising historical detail and compelling characters. Excellent pacing kept me turning pages. It's a keeper. Beautiful book!
