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A Brief History of the Human Race

A Brief History of the Human Race

List Price: $26.95
Your Price: $17.79
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Interesting but inadequate
Review: "No one can know all there is to be known about it, let alone hope to convey even the gist of it in one small volume" - the author in his preface

"The result is that this book is both deliberately selective and involuntarily patchy." - also from preface

The first quote relates the author's ideas on writing about human history, and the second exemplifies his approach to this book. These two quotes convey exactly what you can expect from this book. It is obviously not a comprehensive history of the human race nor does it intend to be, but even as an organized outline of our history, it falls short. It is patchy, and the author often presents his ideas and arguments in rather haphazard sequences.

The main part of Cook's history is separated into chapters based on geographical origins (or absences) of civilization. He takes us from Australia to the Americas then to Africa and so forth, and in the process, he uses familiar discussions of climate and geography to relate the rise of civilization predominantly with farming. The last part of the book is concerned with the interaction of civilizations and how various cultures were affected by the Islamic world, European expansion, etc. All in all, Cook provides very interesting information, and his arguments are fairly good.

However, many of the chapters include interesting discussions of traditions or phenomena that are/were unique to certain civilizations, but the author fails to satisfactorily integrate these with his other discussions. He does not adequately compare and contrast cultural traditions but rather describes them and moves on. Of course, the author may not have able to do that without substantially lengthening the book, but a book titled "A Brief History of the Human Race" should be able to provide a more cohesive picture than the disorganized one that it does.

Another problem I had with this book was that it was sorely lacking in maps and figures. There are a few to be sure, but the author apparently assumes that the average reader has a very good knowledge of geographical and geological history. For example, the author repeatedly refers to Pangaea, Gondwanaland, and Eurasia but never provides a map of the world before the continents took their present shape.

This book is a pretty quick and informative read, but if you're looking for a more comprehensive and organized work, look elsewhere.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Interesting but inadequate
Review: "No one can know all there is to be known about it, let alone hope to convey even the gist of it in one small volume" - the author in his preface

"The result is that this book is both deliberately selective and involuntarily patchy." - also from preface

The first quote relates the author's ideas on writing about human history, and the second exemplifies his approach to this book. These two quotes convey exactly what you can expect from this book. It is obviously not a comprehensive history of the human race nor does it intend to be, but even as an organized outline of our history, it falls short. It is patchy, and the author often presents his ideas and arguments in rather haphazard sequences.

The main part of Cook's history is separated into chapters based on geographical origins (or absences) of civilization. He takes us from Australia to the Americas then to Africa and so forth, and in the process, he uses familiar discussions of climate and geography to relate the rise of civilization predominantly with farming. The last part of the book is concerned with the interaction of civilizations and how various cultures were affected by the Islamic world, European expansion, etc. All in all, Cook provides very interesting information, and his arguments are fairly good.

However, many of the chapters include interesting discussions of traditions or phenomena that are/were unique to certain civilizations, but the author fails to satisfactorily integrate these with his other discussions. He does not adequately compare and contrast cultural traditions but rather describes them and moves on. Of course, the author may not have able to do that without substantially lengthening the book, but a book titled "A Brief History of the Human Race" should be able to provide a more cohesive picture than the disorganized one that it does.

Another problem I had with this book was that it was sorely lacking in maps and figures. There are a few to be sure, but the author apparently assumes that the average reader has a very good knowledge of geographical and geological history. For example, the author repeatedly refers to Pangaea, Gondwanaland, and Eurasia but never provides a map of the world before the continents took their present shape.

This book is a pretty quick and informative read, but if you're looking for a more comprehensive and organized work, look elsewhere.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: The Forest, Not the Trees
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed Michael Cook's "A Brief History of the Human Race." Although Cook does not address the details of world history, his book is a well-written exploration of broad themes and interesting questions.

Much of what Cook has to say seems simple but is nonetheless thought provoking. For example, Cook poses the intriguing question of whether human history as we know it was, broadly speaking, the only kind of history that humans could have made. Specifically, was there anything inevitable about the development of farming and civilization, or might we have somehow "chosen" to remain nomads or hunter/gatherers or pastoralists? Having posed this question, Cook skillfuly compares the development of civilizations in both the new world and the old world, concluding that, given enough time and population, agriculture and a civilization of some sort are inevitable outcomes of human history.

Cook's work explores a number of other interesting questions, such as why human history as we understand it appeared when it did (it has to do with the warm period that began about 10,000 years ago at the end of the last Ice Age) and why writing appeared first in civilized societies rather than earlier among hunter-gatherers. Whether you agree with Cook or not, his answers to the broad questions of history are quite interesting, and his writing style is clear and enjoyable.

Keep in mind that Cook's focus is on the forest, not the trees. Although he discusses a few important historical events in order to make his points, "A Brief History of the Human Race" is a book about broad themes rather than a chronology of events. If you want to learn the basics of world history, you would probably do better to start with a book like J.M. Roberts' "A History of the World" (or his somewhat less weighty "Concise History of the World). But if you already know something about world history and you want to explore some big ideas that make sense of some of those facts and dates, Cook's "A Brief History of the Human Race" is a great place to start.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: The preface sums up the book
Review: In the preface the author says that the book isn't meant to me a Grand Unified Theory of history. That it isn't, but I get the feeling that the first draft was meant to be and that the preface was subsequently written to state the obvious failure. The first three chapters are good. The rest is an arbitrariliy arranged collection of occasionally interesting facts mixed with poorly argued conclusions. I'm not an academic, but even I found the last two chapters (especially the one on the modern world) almost laughable in the breadth and shallowness of it's argument.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Brief but helpful
Review: Professor Cook of Princeton wrote this very enjoyable book on the pertinent points of our civilizations. It is one for the common reader, who didn't get enough of such an important education in the high school and college. Cook's attempts to integrate geography to the histories of major events were very helpful. One cannot neglect the effects of mountains and rivers on our society and human psyche, however imperceptible to one's mind. It is uncommon, yet refreshing, to see maps of the world with records of rainfalls in each chapter in such book. But how does all the records of rainfall really help if no demonstration of the effects of weather is described? In his description of Africa, it attempts such an explanation, which I really enjoyed, but it didn't spread to other civilizations too well. I applaud the Professor's efforts, and hope the reader will follow up any interest in the book in his well-presented section of "Further Reading."

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Fascinating but faulty early chapters
Review: The writer (Cook) gets it right, early in the book, when he says that the first farming ever was in the middle east and that modern day europeans are to a limited degree directly descended from these middle eastern farmers. I give the book three stars just for this. But he loses my supprt when he starts talking about neanderthals and their culture just a little too confidently. Hey Mr. Cook, a lot of what we say about neanderthals and how they lived is just guess work.We've done nothing more than positively prove they existed.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Very provocative book
Review: This is a book to be read over a weekend: well written, no footnotes and generic explanations of causes of historic developments. The reader is taken to a tour of the history of the human race as it developed in the continents.The author states that he does not have a Grand Unified Theory of history but does have ideas (some borrowed from others) - and his ideas are really thought provoking! The final chapter on the Modern World is a little bit frustating in (or lack of) explaining the inequalities in the world today.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Very provocative book
Review: This is a book to be read over a weekend: well written, no footnotes and generic explanations of causes of historic developments. The reader is taken to a tour of the history of the human race as it developed in the continents.The author states that he does not have a Grand Unified Theory of history but does have ideas (some borrowed from others) - and his ideas are really thought provoking! The final chapter on the Modern World is a little bit frustating in (or lack of) explaining the inequalities in the world today.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Thought provoking and well organized
Review: True to his book's title, historian Cook takes on a daunting project and manages to chart a flow of global human history over the last 10,000 years, since the start of our present era of benign climate, the Holocene, and the consequent advent of farming. Only with farming can people begin to put down roots, feed larger numbers, accumulate pottery, build cities, and construct - or steal- a system of writing to leave an account of themselves for posterity.

Farming began in the Near East - Mesopotamia (present day Iraq) - the birthplace of civilization, as every schoolchild learns. Interestingly, and logically, as Cook shows, the last place civilization caught on in the Old World was Western Europe - its best soils being too heavy for the available plow. When a heavier plow was developed halfway through the first millennium, cities sprouted and armies reaped the benefits.

In broad strokes (with accompanying broad maps) Cook credits geography, climate and natural resources for driving early advances. Cultural flow is more problematic - why did Greek culture spread while Egyptian did not? Or why did Buddhism wander to China while Hinduism stayed put in India? Cook raises many such tantalizing questions and explores what evidence there is, offering cogent theories of his own. And he shows how technological advances shaped larger movements - expensive bronze favoring elite rule, while cheap iron empowered the masses, for instance.

But if farming made civilization possible, monotheism began to shape the world as we know it. Christianity made its way through the scattered Jewish diaspora of the Roman Empire and was, as a political expedient, finally adopted as the state religion by Constantine. It then became attractive to frontier peoples as a trapping of civilization. Islam (Cook's specialty) solved a political difficulty by uniting two Arab tribes in Arabia to form a state, which then had the power to coordinate a wave of conquest, which resulted in the largest empire ever.

Cook organizes his book in four parts. He begins with an overview of prehistory and inevitable development and concludes with a question, "Toward One World?" which embraces the Islamic expansion, the European expansion and the modern world. Three-part chapters within each of these sections focus on broad geographical masses and the cultural developments within, then draw it all together by homing in on particular features: the complicated marriageability rules among the Australian Aranda, Chinese ancestor worship, caste and sexuality in Hinduism, Greek pottery and more.

Much is left out; much is simplified. Naturally. And the most interesting bits are the story-like chapter conclusions. But Cook uses these to illustrate his broader points and to show the individual peculiarities of human cultures. His writing is lucid, often witty, and seldom dry. And he gives an extensive "further reading" list for each chapter. A fine, thought-provoking, well-organized and succinct history of the last 10,000 years.


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