The Dawn of Everything
Title | The Dawn of Everything PDF eBook |
Author | David Graeber |
Publisher | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
Pages | 384 |
Release | 2021-11-09 |
Genre | Social Science |
ISBN | 0374721106 |
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A dramatically new understanding of human history, challenging our most fundamental assumptions about social evolution—from the development of agriculture and cities to the origins of the state, democracy, and inequality—and revealing new possibilities for human emancipation. For generations, our remote ancestors have been cast as primitive and childlike—either free and equal innocents, 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 conservative reaction to powerful critiques of European society posed by Indigenous observers and intellectuals. Revisiting this encounter has startling implications for how we make sense of human history today, including the origins of farming, property, cities, democracy, slavery, and civilization itself. Drawing on pathbreaking research in archaeology and anthropology, the authors show how history becomes a far more interesting place once we learn to throw off our conceptual shackles and perceive 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 social and economic organization did they lead to? The answers are often unexpected, and suggest that the course of human history may be less set in stone, and more full of playful, hopeful 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, new ways of organizing society. This is a monumental book of formidable intellectual range, animated by curiosity, moral vision, and a faith in the power of direct action. Includes Black-and-White Illustrations
A Small Farm Future
Title | A Small Farm Future PDF eBook |
Author | Chris Smaje |
Publisher | Chelsea Green Publishing |
Pages | 322 |
Release | 2020-10-22 |
Genre | Business & Economics |
ISBN | 1603589031 |
A modern classic of the new agrarianism "Chris Smaje...shows that the choice is clear. Either we have a small farm future, or we face collapse and extinction."—Vandana Shiva "Every young person should read this book."—Richard Heinberg In a groundbreaking debut, farmer and social scientist Chris Smaje argues that organizing society around small-scale farming offers the soundest, sanest and most reasonable response to climate change and other crises of civilisation—and will yield humanity’s best chance at survival. Drawing on a vast range of sources from across a multitude of disciplines, A Small Farm Future analyses the complex forces that make societal change inevitable; explains how low-carbon, locally self-reliant agrarian communities can empower us to successfully confront these changes head on; and explores the pathways for delivering this vision politically. Challenging both conventional wisdom and utopian blueprints, A Small Farm Future offers rigorous original analysis of wicked problems and hidden opportunities in a way that illuminates the path toward functional local economies, effective self-provisioning, agricultural diversity and a shared earth. Perfect for readers of both Wendell Berry and Thomas Piketty, A Small Farm Future is a refreshing, new outlook on a way forward for society—and a vital resource for activists, students, policy makers, and anyone looking to enact change.
Dawn of the New Everything
Title | Dawn of the New Everything PDF eBook |
Author | Jaron Lanier |
Publisher | Henry Holt |
Pages | 369 |
Release | 2017-11-21 |
Genre | Biography & Autobiography |
ISBN | 1627794093 |
The Microsoft interdisciplinary scientist largely credited with popularizing virtual reality reflects on his lifelong relationship with technology, showing VR's ability to illuminate and amplify our understanding of our species and how the brain and body connect to the world. By the author of You Are Not a Gadget. --Publisher.
Debt, Updated and Expanded
Title | Debt, Updated and Expanded PDF eBook |
Author | David Graeber |
Publisher | Melville House |
Pages | 566 |
Release | 2014-12-09 |
Genre | Business & Economics |
ISBN | 1612194206 |
Now in paperback, the updated and expanded edition: David Graeber’s “fresh . . . fascinating . . . thought-provoking . . . and exceedingly timely” (Financial Times) history of debt Here anthropologist David Graeber presents a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom: he shows that before there was money, there was debt. For more than 5,000 years, since the beginnings of the first agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems to buy and sell goods—that is, long before the invention of coins or cash. It is in this era, Graeber argues, that we also first encounter a society divided into debtors and creditors. Graeber shows that arguments about debt and debt forgiveness have been at the center of political debates from Italy to China, as well as sparking innumerable insurrections. He also brilliantly demonstrates that the language of the ancient works of law and religion (words like “guilt,” “sin,” and “redemption”) derive in large part from ancient debates about debt, and shape even our most basic ideas of right and wrong. We are still fighting these battles today without knowing it.
Dawn of the New Everything
Title | Dawn of the New Everything PDF eBook |
Author | Jaron Lanier |
Publisher | Arrow |
Pages | 0 |
Release | 2018 |
Genre | Virtual reality |
ISBN | 9781784701536 |
The father of virtual reality explains its dazzling possibilities by reflecting on his own lifelong relationship with technology. Bridging the gap between tech mania and the experience of being inside the human body, Jaron Lanier has written a three-pronged adventure into 'virtual reality', by exposing its ability to illuminate and amplify our understanding of our species.
Gender Through Time in the Ancient Near East
Title | Gender Through Time in the Ancient Near East PDF eBook |
Author | Diane Bolger |
Publisher | Rowman Altamira |
Pages | 396 |
Release | 2008 |
Genre | Social Science |
ISBN | 9780759110922 |
This is the first book to consider issues of gender and social identity across a broad temporal and geographical range of civilizations in the ancient Near East.
The Dawn of All
Title | The Dawn of All PDF eBook |
Author | Robert Hugh Benson |
Publisher | |
Pages | 438 |
Release | 1911 |
Genre | Fiction |
ISBN |
The Dawn of All by Robert Hugh Benson, first published in 1911, is a rare manuscript, the original residing in one of the great libraries of the world. This book is a reproduction of that original, which has been scanned and cleaned by state-of-the-art publishing tools for better readability and enhanced appreciation. Restoration Editors' mission is to bring long out of print manuscripts back to life. Some smudges, annotations or unclear text may still exist, due to permanent damage to the original work. We believe the literary significance of the text justifies offering this reproduction, allowing a new generation to appreciate it.