The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity
By David Graeber and David Wengrow; Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 704 pages, $35.
with passion but also undermine its intellectual integrity, leaning toward opinion journalism rather than scholarship. It’s ultimately a political document; one can’t help but think the authors were trying to justify – for hundreds of pages – their own anti-authoritarian (and contradictory) views.
And yet the book’s an enthralling read, crackling with energy and arguments that rarely push into mainstream discourse. “The Dawn of Everything” may be less than the sum of its parts, but it’s nonetheless a searching, vibrant work that will inspire future researchers to dig deeper into the past.