Please note: In order to keep Hive up to date and provide users with the best features, we are no longer able to fully support Internet Explorer. The site is still available to you, however some sections of the site may appear broken. We would encourage you to move to a more modern browser like Firefox, Edge or Chrome in order to experience the site fully.

Supporting your high street Find out how »
The Dawn of Everything : A New History of Humanity, Hardback Book

The Dawn of Everything : A New History of Humanity Hardback

Hardback

Item not Available

Description

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER AND SUNDAY TIMES, OBSERVER AND BBC HISTORY BOOK OF THE YEARFINALIST FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL WRITING 2022'Pacey and potentially revolutionary' Sunday Times'Iconoclastic and irreverent ... an exhilarating read' The GuardianFor generations, our remote ancestors have been cast as primitive and childlike - either free and equal, or thuggish and warlike.

Civilization, we are told, could be achieved only by sacrificing those original freedoms or, alternatively, by taming our baser instincts.

David Graeber and David Wengrow show how such theories first emerged in the eighteenth century as a reaction to indigenous critiques of European society, and why they are wrong.

In doing so, they overturn our view of human history, 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 begin to see what's really there.

If humans did not spend 95 per cent 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?

The answers are often unexpected, and suggest that the course of history may be less set in stone, and more full of playful 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 faith in the power of direct action. 'This is not a book. This is an intellectual feast' Nassim Nicholas Taleb'The most profound and exciting book I've read in thirty years' Robin D.

G. Kelley

Information

Other Formats

Save 21%

£30.00

£23.45

Item not Available
Item not Available
Sign in to add to wishlist
 
Free Home Delivery

on all orders

 
Pick up orders

from local bookshops

Information