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Rating: 
Summary: A great comparative review of early civilizations
Review: In the last few years I have tried and read books offering a broad scope and general overviews of history, sociology, anthropology and religion (you may well say that globalization has reached social science too). With that aim in mind, I have read this book.The description on the approach of the book provided by the "Book reviews" is fairly accurate. Therefore, I will only point out that this book shows both the depths of the present state of knowledge and ignorance on the matter: all relevant issues of 7 early civilizations are compared and the conclusions are basically negative, i.e., current rival explanations are shown to be defective, and the author expects that psychology and the neurosciences may help to provide for better explanations in the future, but the author does not set forth any new paradigma or global explanation on the subject. Although the content is very interesting, the book often happens to be a tough reading; therefore I have rated the book as a 4 start book(content: 5 starts; pleasure of reading: 3 to 1). Other books I would recommend to read are the following: "The Dynamics of Global Dominance. European Overseas Empires 1415-1980", by David Abernethy, the trilogy on the Information Age ("The Rise of the Network Society", "The power of Identity", "End of Millennium") by Manuel Castells, "Pre-industrial societies" by Patricia Crone, "The History of Government" by S.E. Finer, "Power and privilege" by Gerhard Lenski, "The world economy. A millennial perspective" by Angus Maddison, "The Rise of the West" by William H. McNeill, "The Phenomenon of Religion", by Moojan Momen and "World History. A new perspective" by Clive Ponting.
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