This is an engaging but serious exploration of
the role of alcohol in human history. Slingerland’s main argument is that
alcohol encourages both community and creativity.
In particular, it can
encourage trust if people are more likely to say what they truly believe when
intoxicated. I am skeptical of a strong link to creativity, but many other arguments in the book persuaded me. Slingerland makes a good
case that alcohol was a/the key reason that humans developed agriculture.
Importantly, Slingerland recognizes that the earliest beers and wines were not
as strong as today; he treats alcoholism as a modern scourge.
While plenty of entertaining books have been written about the history of alcohol and other intoxicants, none have offered a comprehensive, convincing answer to the basic question of why humans want to get high in the first place.
Drunk elegantly cuts through the tangle of urban legends and anecdotal impressions that surround our notions of intoxication to provide the first rigorous, scientifically-grounded explanation for our love of alcohol. Drawing on evidence from archaeology, history, cognitive neuroscience, psychopharmacology, social psychology, literature, and genetics, Drunk shows that our taste for chemical intoxicants is not an evolutionary mistake, as we are so often…
I
like works of history that make a compelling point by carefully analyzing the
past. Wright shows how the religious beliefs that characterize much of the
world–Christianity, Islam, Judaism–emerged slowly over the course of
millennia.
They tended to reflect realities on Earth: strong empires encouraged
a belief in one all-powerful god. Gods tended to be vengeful in times of war
but tolerant in times of peace. Differences across the three religions thus
reflect the times and places in which their religious doctrines were codified.
In this sweeping narrative that takes us from the Stone Age to the Information Age, Robert Wright unveils an astonishing discovery: there is a hidden pattern that the great monotheistic faiths have followed as they have evolved. Through the prisms of archaeology, theology, and evolutionary psychology, Wright's findings overturn basic assumptions about Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and are sure to cause controversy. He explains why spirituality has a role today, and why science, contrary to conventional wisdom, affirms the validity of the religious quest. And this previously unrecognized evolutionary logic points not toward continued religious extremism, but future harmony.
The
book makes a detailed and novel argument for the importance of natural harbors
in history.
Not surprisingly, such places tended to attract merchants. Less
obviously, these merchants encouraged more communal forms of governance than
characterized agricultural lands.
Europe has more natural harbors than other
continents, and these played a larger role in European political development. I
found the line of argument very persuasive.
This book explores the deep roots of modern democracy, focusing on geography and long-term patterns of global diffusion. Its geographic argument centers on access to the sea, afforded by natural harbors which enhance the mobility of people, goods, capital, and ideas. The extraordinary connectivity of harbor regions thereby affected economic development, the structure of the military, statebuilding, and openness to the world - and, through these pathways, the development of representative democracy. The authors' second argument focuses on the global diffusion of representative democracy. Beginning around 1500, Europeans started to populate distant places abroad. Where Europeans were numerous they established…
Making Sense of World Historyfocuses on the “why” of
history: Why did world history unfold as it did? Why was agriculture developed?
Why were there empires, and what were their effects? Why did population and
economic output expand slowly and erratically for millennia and then rapidly
in recent centuries?
It employs a set of organizing strategies– flowcharts,
social evolutionary analysis, and notes linking chapters– to describe
how the events and processes of one time and place build on events and
processes in earlier times and places. It also draws careful historical
comparisons.
In particular, it tracks how rulers, merchants, farmers, parents,
and dozens of other types of people faced a common set of challenges and often
but not always addressed these in similar ways.
