The Dawn of Everything
A New History of Humanity
Published on 2. June 2022
Book
Paperback/Softback
720 pages
978-0-14-199106-1 (ISBN)
Description
THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER AND SUNDAY TIMES, OBSERVER AND BBC HISTORY BOOK OF THE YEAR
FINALIST FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL WRITING 2022
'Pacey and potentially revolutionary' Sunday Times
'Iconoclastic and irreverent ... an exhilarating read' The Guardian
For 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
FINALIST FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL WRITING 2022
'Pacey and potentially revolutionary' Sunday Times
'Iconoclastic and irreverent ... an exhilarating read' The Guardian
For 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
Reviews / Votes
A boldly ambitious work ... entertaining and thought-provoking ... an impressively large undertaking that succeeds in making us reconsider not just the remote past but also the too-close-to-see present, as well as the common thread that is our shifting and elusive nature. -- Andrew Anthony * Observer * What a gift ... Graeber and Wengrow offer a history of the past 30,000 years that is not only wildly different from anything we're used to, but also far more interesting: textured, surprising, paradoxical, inspiring. -- William Deresiewicz * The Atlantic * Iconoclastic and irreverent ... an exhilarating read ... As we seek new, sustainable ways to organise our world, we need to understand the full range of ways our ancestors thought and lived. And we must certainly question conventional versions of our history which we have accepted, unexamined, for far too long. -- David Priestland * The Guardian * Pacey and potentially revolutionary ... This is more than an argument about the past, it is about the human condition in the present. -- Bryan Appleyard * Sunday Times * A fascinating, radical, and playful entry into a seemingly exhaustively well-trodden genre, the grand evolutionary history of humanity. It seeks nothing less than to completely upend the terms on which the Standard Narrative rests ... erudite, compelling, generative, and frequently remarkably funny ... once you start thinking like Graeber and Wengrow, it's difficult to stop. -- Emily M. Kern * Boston Review * A spectacular, flashy and ground-breaking retelling of human history, blazing with iconoclastic rebuttals to conventional wisdom. Full of fresh thinking, it's a pleasure to read and offers a bracing challenge on every page. -- Simon Sebag Montefiore * BBC History * A timely, intriguing, original and provocative take on the most recent thirty thousand years of human history ... consistently thought-provoking ... In forcing us to re-examine some of the cosy assumptions about our deep past, Graeber and Wengrow remind us very clearly of the perils of holding ourselves captive to a deterministic vision of human history as we try to shape our future. -- James Suzman * Literary Review * An engrossing series of insights ... They re-inject humanity into our distant forebears, suggesting that our prevailing story about human history - that not much innovation occurred in human societies until the invention of agriculture - is utterly wrong. -- Anthony Doerr * Observer * Fascinating, thought-provoking, groundbreaking. A book that will generate debate for years to come. -- Rutger Bregman The Dawn of Everything is also the radical revision of everything, liberating us from the familiar stories about humanity's past that are too often deployed to impose limitations on how we imagine humanity's future. Instead they tell us that what human beings are most of all is creative, from the beginning, so that there is no one way we were or should or could be. Another of the powerful currents running through this book is a reclaiming of Indigenous perspectives as a colossal influence on European thought, a valuable contribution to decolonizing global histories. -- Rebecca SolnitMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paperback (UK-B)
Dimensions
Height: 196 mm
Width: 128 mm
Thickness: 34 mm
Weight
490 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-14-199106-1 (9780141991061)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
10/2021
1st Edition
Penguin Books Ltd
€12.99
Available for download
Persons
David Graeber (Author)
David Graeber was a professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics. He is the author of, among others, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, Debt: The First 5,000 Years, Bullshit Jobs: A Theory, and Pirate Enlightenment, and was a contributor to Harper's Magazine, the Guardian, and the Baffler. An iconic thinker and renowned activist, his early efforts helped to make Occupy Wall Street an era-defining movement. He died on 2 September 2020.
David Wengrow (Author)
David Wengrow is a professor of comparative archaeology at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London, and has been a visiting professor at New York University. He is the author of three books, including What Makes Civilization?. Wengrow conducts archaeological fieldwork in various parts of Africa and the Middle East.
David Graeber was a professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics. He is the author of, among others, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, Debt: The First 5,000 Years, Bullshit Jobs: A Theory, and Pirate Enlightenment, and was a contributor to Harper's Magazine, the Guardian, and the Baffler. An iconic thinker and renowned activist, his early efforts helped to make Occupy Wall Street an era-defining movement. He died on 2 September 2020.
David Wengrow (Author)
David Wengrow is a professor of comparative archaeology at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London, and has been a visiting professor at New York University. He is the author of three books, including What Makes Civilization?. Wengrow conducts archaeological fieldwork in various parts of Africa and the Middle East.