The bestselling author of Collapse and Guns, Germs and Steel
surveys the history of human societies to answer the question: What can
we learn from traditional societies that can make the world a better
place for all of us?
"As he did in his Pulitzer Prize-winning Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared
Diamond continues to make us think with his mesmerizing and absorbing
new book. Bookpage
Most of us take for granted the features of our modern society, from air
travel and telecommunications to literacy and obesity. Yet for nearly
all of its six million years of existence, human society had none of
these things. While the gulf that divides us from our primitive
ancestors may seem unbridgeably wide, we can glimpse much of our former
lifestyle in those largely traditional societies still or recently in
existence. Societies like those of the New Guinea Highlanders remind us
that it was only yesterday--in evolutionary time--when everything
changed and that we moderns still possess bodies and social practices
often better adapted to traditional than to modern conditions.The World
Until Yesterday provides a mesmerizing firsthand picture of the human
past as it had been for millions of years--a past that has mostly
vanished--and considers what the differences between that past and our
present mean for our lives today.
This is Jared Diamond's most personal book to date, as he draws
extensively from his decades of field work in the Pacific islands, as
well as evidence from Inuit, Amazonian Indians, Kalahari San people, and
others. Diamond doesn't romanticize traditional societies--after all, we
are shocked by some of their practices--but he finds that their
solutions to universal human problems such as child rearing, elder care,
dispute resolution, risk, and physical fitness have much to teach us.
Provocative, enlightening, and entertaining, The World Until Yesterday
is an essential and fascinating read.
