The Dawn of Everything

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER AND SUNDAY TIMES, OBSERVER, AND BBC HISTORY BOOK OF THE YEAR

FINALIST FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL WRITING 2022

‘Pacey and potentially revolutionary’ Sunday Times

‘Iconoclastic and irreverent … an exhilarating read’ The Guardian

For generations, our remote ancestors have been cast as primitive and childlike – either free and equal, or thuggish and warlike. Civilization, we are told, could be achieved only by sacrificing those original freedoms or, alternatively, by taming our baser instincts. David Graeber and David Wengrow show how such theories first emerged in the eighteenth century as a reaction to indigenous critiques of European society, and why they are wrong. In doing so, they overturn our view of human history, including the origins of farming, property, cities, democracy, slavery, and civilization itself.

Drawing on path-breaking research in archaeology and anthropology, the authors show how history becomes a far more interesting place once we begin to see what’s really there. If humans did not spend 95 percent of their evolutionary past in tiny bands of hunter-gatherers, what were they doing all that time? If agriculture, and cities, did not mean a plunge into hierarchy and domination, then what kinds of the social and economic organization did they lead to? The answers are often unexpected and suggest that the course of history may be less set in stone, and more full of playful possibilities than we tend to assume.

The Dawn of Everything fundamentally transforms our understanding of the human past and offers a path toward imagining new forms of freedom, and new ways of organizing society. This is a monumental book of formidable intellectual range, animated by curiosity, moral vision, and faith in the power of direct action.

‘This is not a book. This is an intellectual feast’ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

‘The most profound and exciting book I’ve read in thirty years’ Robin D. G. Kelley