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mnboyer's review
5.0
I clearly enjoyed this more than a lot of the previous reviewers. I found this title randomly while perusing Bookman's (a local buy-sell-trade book store in Tucson, Arizona) and decided that I was going to take a chance on it. A scholar in Indigenous/American Indian Studies, the word "savage" has a lot of different connotations and this is probably why I first picked the book up--I was interested to see how Weatherford was using the term. And once I started reading this book, for me, it was really hard to put down.
It does read like an introduction to anthropology, perhaps, because it begins exploring civilization from Pangaea onward. I think that Weatherford does this in an interesting manner because each chapter attempts to focus on a certain geographic location. Chapters have unique information about things you might not think to expect in a civilization guide: for example, did you know a seal penis bone can be up to 2 feet long and is shaped like a baseball bat? That is a unique tidbit that you can pick up, and there is more information peppered throughout chapters.
Of course, there are some 'greatest hits' in the chapters. You are definitely going to read about Alexander the Great, Egypt, Rome, etc. and I don't find that to be a negative thing. If you're interested in exploring civilization, including these chapters makes a lot of sense. But there are a lot of chapters devoted to Asian countries/locations as well as African regions. I was surprised to see a discussion about Spain. And of course, I was very interested in the chapters that discussed cannibals (Fiji/New Zealand) and there are nice bits and pieces that discuss American Indians.
I'll leave a few quotes here:
"Civilization needs the tribal values to survive; yet civilized urban life in most parts of the world destroys tribal people whenever contact is made." (p121)
"Colonialism is as old as civilization." (p186)
"From the Sioux in South Dakota to the Zulu in South Africa, from the Maori of New Zealand to the Eskimo of the Arctic, the tribal people had fallen under the administration of some alien nation or state. Defeated and no longer a threat to the national destiny of any government, tribal people became objects of curiosity--romantic novelties from the past, surviving in a rapidly modernizing world." (p210)
"Our vision of native peoples, no matter whether positive or negative, often reveals more about ourselves than it does about them." (p210)
"If war or new plagues do not bring down civilization, it might easily collapse as a result of environmental degradation and the disruption of productive agricultural lands. If the great collapse comes, it might well come from something that we do not yet suspect. Perhaps war, disease, famine, and environmental degradation will be only parts of the process and not the causes. . . . Because we do not know the problems that lie ahead of us, we do not know which set of human skills or which cultural perspective we will need." (p290-291)
Again, I really enjoyed this book and thought that it did a good job of covering a *lot* of civilization's timeline. I have read a lot of academic texts and don't find it to be 'dull' as some other reviewers did. But... in fairness... I have read a lot of books that I would definitely categorize as dull. This just wasn't one of them.
It does read like an introduction to anthropology, perhaps, because it begins exploring civilization from Pangaea onward. I think that Weatherford does this in an interesting manner because each chapter attempts to focus on a certain geographic location. Chapters have unique information about things you might not think to expect in a civilization guide: for example, did you know a seal penis bone can be up to 2 feet long and is shaped like a baseball bat? That is a unique tidbit that you can pick up, and there is more information peppered throughout chapters.
Of course, there are some 'greatest hits' in the chapters. You are definitely going to read about Alexander the Great, Egypt, Rome, etc. and I don't find that to be a negative thing. If you're interested in exploring civilization, including these chapters makes a lot of sense. But there are a lot of chapters devoted to Asian countries/locations as well as African regions. I was surprised to see a discussion about Spain. And of course, I was very interested in the chapters that discussed cannibals (Fiji/New Zealand) and there are nice bits and pieces that discuss American Indians.
I'll leave a few quotes here:
"Civilization needs the tribal values to survive; yet civilized urban life in most parts of the world destroys tribal people whenever contact is made." (p121)
"Colonialism is as old as civilization." (p186)
"From the Sioux in South Dakota to the Zulu in South Africa, from the Maori of New Zealand to the Eskimo of the Arctic, the tribal people had fallen under the administration of some alien nation or state. Defeated and no longer a threat to the national destiny of any government, tribal people became objects of curiosity--romantic novelties from the past, surviving in a rapidly modernizing world." (p210)
"Our vision of native peoples, no matter whether positive or negative, often reveals more about ourselves than it does about them." (p210)
"If war or new plagues do not bring down civilization, it might easily collapse as a result of environmental degradation and the disruption of productive agricultural lands. If the great collapse comes, it might well come from something that we do not yet suspect. Perhaps war, disease, famine, and environmental degradation will be only parts of the process and not the causes. . . . Because we do not know the problems that lie ahead of us, we do not know which set of human skills or which cultural perspective we will need." (p290-291)
Again, I really enjoyed this book and thought that it did a good job of covering a *lot* of civilization's timeline. I have read a lot of academic texts and don't find it to be 'dull' as some other reviewers did. But... in fairness... I have read a lot of books that I would definitely categorize as dull. This just wasn't one of them.
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