I AM FINALLY FREE!!! To anybody has viewed my Goodreads profile since its humble beginnings, you may have noticed that I have been trying to read this brick for 2.5 years, picking it up and putting it down (or rather dropping it and creating a crater in the earth) when it got too dense, which is often.
This historical/anthropological behemoth by David Graeber and David Wengrow is an important modern reimagining/reexamination of our ancestors, the evolutions of social orders, and how we think about “civilization.” It presents some really intriguing arguments and evidence to expand our imagination of how ancient people organized their societies, uprooting most conventional wisdom of the march of “progress,” the foundings of democracy/equality, and the “inevitability” of things many of us do not question. It adds so much richness to various societies across the globe that existed before our capitalist world order. This book and its authors are also extremely combative to the narrow-mindedness of other historians and anthropologists, which is really awesome.
While this is easily a 4 or 5 star book, I just cannot possibly give it a great rating because it took me so long and was so difficult to get through. That’s a me problem. No book I have ever read has tested me more than this one. While there is so much to love and appreciate in this, it just did not grasp me consistently enough to keep me engaged. Still, this is a crucial work that should be read (or skimmed) by anybody interested in a meta narrative of the bend of society, specific and obscure voices from the ancient past, or various reflections on human nature and history. I also recommend this to anybody who enjoys suffering.
3/5