Dawn of Everything, The

by David Graeber and David Wengrow

8/10

I loved the general argument of this book, that we don’t take non-Western modes of political and social organization seriously enough. I also agree with the surprisingly intuitive decision to use American civilizations as a basis for testing commonly accepted beliefs about the origins of states and other political systems.

There was no hemispheric hegemony on this side of the Atlantic, as would develop across Eurasia by the 11th century or so. Therefore the civilizations that coalesced and subsided can be used as multiple independent examples to analyze, rather than each one being a single facet of a larger hemispheric phenomenon.

The only thing I didn’t like about this was that it was really long, meandering, and took me longer to read than I would have liked. I still plan on buying it some day to be able to refer back to. I think it’s an important counterargument to the vast majority of anthropological and political histories. I also love the fact that they discuss several relatively obscure authors I’ve read and enjoyed, such as Pierre Clastres, Marshall Sahlins and Michael Boehm. It was certainly a worthy final work for David Graeber (R.I.P.).