Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This book falls very much into the category of man-against-nature, "progress" narratives about human history, and is largely typical of that genre, extending our technological genius all the way back to the australopithecines. There are some peculiarities, however, that call into question the author's credentials and judgment. For example, at the outset, the author implies that hunter-gatherer groups are totally hierarchical, when as an anthropologist he well knows (or should know) that there is a tremendous amount of research into hunter-gatherer groups showing they are basically egalitarian (see Chris Boehm's 1999 book for example). Presumably he omits this because humans transitioning from egalitarian to hierarchical societies doesn't fit his overall narrative of ever-expanding human liberty thanks to the advance of technology. There are several points toward the end of the book where the author does begin to admit some of the darker effects of technology, when he laments the "demise of traditional values" (p239) and the fact that women have sadly lost their place in the home ("the very labor-saving devices that modern people have acquired to make women's work lighter and easier have had the effect of depriving women of the indispensable position they formerly enjoyed in their relationships with men and in society in general'' (p230)) , but he goes on to reassure us that we can overcome any problem. And incredibly, he argues that dumping CO2 into the atmosphere, far from being a bad thing, is actually *helping* by preventing the real danger---another ice age. As a student of both anthropology and physics, I found the book lacking and do not recommend it.