1.56k reviews for:

The Dawn of Everything

David Wengrow, David Graeber

4.27 AVERAGE

wyliem's review against another edition

3.0

informative reflective medium-paced

squid_rl's review against another edition

4.75

challenging hopeful informative reflective medium-paced

jonathan_gerb's review against another edition

4.75

informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

tishkova's review

1.5

informative slow-paced

alliecw's review against another edition

4.0

adventurous challenging informative inspiring reflective slow-paced

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A lot of this book went over my head, I’ll admit. But this was my first foray into anthropology. Especially with what is happening today, this book provided a lot of insights on power, freedom, and how human nature has handled those concepts throughout the ages.

nikhil_joglekar's review against another edition

5.0

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Holy moly this was an intense read - if it isn't already, this will be some sort of PhD history textbook, considering how it's written! This book challenges the assumptions used in our typical history text regarding the formation of modern civilization. The authors provide numerous examples of hunter-gatherers living not as nomads, but rather in structured societies, cities, even. I've read a lot about how agriculture and agricultural storage are responsible for the formation of cities and governments in the past - The Dawn of Everything takes us down a different path.

If you do not want to slog through this book (it's kind of worth it, but it's quite difficult), there's apparently a pretty solid New Yorker review:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/11/08/early-civilizations-had-it-all-figured-out-the-dawn-of-everything

bretthodnett's review against another edition

2.0

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Despite the fact that I'd like their premise to be true, and that it seems there is truth to the idea that "primitive" societies in the past were more complex and interactive than we once thought, the authors have cherry picked data and built a variety of straw men to dismantle in order to recklessly extrapolate and generalize to make an argument about what they would like society to be like.

Read this book with a lot of caution, and do some other reading of both the specific examples they discuss, and also of the general context and premises that they put forward. They present a lot of information and it is easy to take them at their word if you have no knowledge of these or related fields.

carolinew's review against another edition

4.0

informative slow-paced

mermaid_serenade's review against another edition

5.0

adventurous informative inspiring reflective slow-paced

lenka_st's review against another edition

4.5

challenging informative slow-paced