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eternallytouchstarved's review
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
maxschuman's review against another edition
challenging
informative
slow-paced
3.0
Definitely well researched and comprehensive. I’m glad I spent time putting my head in this space. But this was tough to really vibe with as an audiobook. Very academic and hard to keep track of points. I think it would’ve resonated more with me if I were reading it on paper, so I could backtrack, reread sentences for comprehension, etc.
kb_208's review
adventurous
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
Graeber is a hell of a writer, RIP. This is the second book I've undertaken from him, and it is a doozy. He tackles a big question that no one has really been able to answer with any type of certainty, "What are the origins of inequality?". He investigates this question in many different ages of prehistory many different areas around the world. My main takeaways from this book are that history is not just a simple evolution sequence where humans developed from savage nomadic hunter/gatherers, to farmers, to living in a large civilization, and then becoming "modern". It is instead far more complicated than that, but historians have often clouded these findings based on their own biases and looking at our world's current civil system the obvious end result. It has often just been easier to stick to this narrative, because it is simple, even when mounting evidence suggests this was not a straight and narrow road. He suggests that there was a lot of social experimentation during prehistory and people were trying out different social systems. Sometimes they would develop small cities and farming communities only to revert back to a more pastoral life after a few centuries. Also there are many cases of obvious rejection of agricultural and city life, due to evidence of hunter/gatherers living near and trading with these bigger civilizations.
Some of the criticism I have seen of this book is that Graeber doesn't say things with much certainty throughout the book. I would say that this is because all this is prehistory and we don't truly know. He is just looking at the evidence that is available and making different hypotheses that often run contrary to popular belief about these subjects.
Some of the criticism I have seen of this book is that Graeber doesn't say things with much certainty throughout the book. I would say that this is because all this is prehistory and we don't truly know. He is just looking at the evidence that is available and making different hypotheses that often run contrary to popular belief about these subjects.
readingatthemuseum's review against another edition
Realised I wasn't in the mood for a sweeping history non-fiction. There are lots of interesting case studies but I was wanting more detail and depth from all of them (which isn't what this book is trying to do).
Might return to it at some point.
Might return to it at some point.
mw1994's review against another edition
funny
informative
slow-paced
3.75
The introduction to The Dawn of Everything hooked me when Graeber and Weingrow challenged their readers to ponder on the contemporary liberal-to-leftist focus on “inequality”—what does it actually insinuate about our understandings of civilization? At its core, The Dawn of Everything rejects teleological views of societal evolution as linear. Graeber and Weingrow argue that anthropological evidence does not support the idea that the human transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture to urbanization laid the ground for inequality. Instead, people have arranged themselves in different societies and hierarchies in any number of ways throughout history. Examples from these societies culminate in a re-evaluation of our critique of modern society—it should not be framed around the origins of inequality, but instead on our inability to be politically flexible and creative.
The library wait for this book was enormously long. As a result, I could not skim-read The Dawn of Everything and committed 24+ hours of my life to the audiobook. This book suffers from the same structure that plagues the other works I have read (paperback) by Graeber—an interesting idea and then 200+ additional pages of repetitive evidence. I managed to finish Bullshit Jobs and The Utopia of Rules despite this, as they were relatively short, but skim-read most of Debt as a result. What I think this comes down to is an inability for Graeber’s editors (or his co-author, in this case) to cede the academic practice of belaboring the point with all evidence possible in favor of creating snappier, friendlier reading. This is especially painful in audiobook form.
Overall, I found The Dawn of Everything compelling, if a bit of a slog. I would recommend the physical book and a bit of skimming. I was devastated to learn of Graeber’s untimely passing but am glad that this was finished and published posthumously. This book, like his others, ropes an unsuspecting audience of readers into contemporary anarchist societal critiques. Who will fill this hole in leftist pop-anthropology? I’m not sure anyone can.
Summary of the pros and cons of the audiobook version:
+ Outstanding narrator who reads with great humor
+ Interesting idea/argument
— Extremely long. Unless you’re a huge history/anthropology nerd, it can get downright boring at times
3.75/5 stars, but would recommend