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The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity Audiobook
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"An all-encompassing treatise on modern civilization, offering bold revisions to canonical understandings in sociology, anthropology, archaeology and political philosophy that led to where we are today." - The New York Times
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.
A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux
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“Its goal…nothing less than upending everything we think we know about the origins and evolution of human societies…[with] new archaeological discoveries of recent decades."
— New York Times
Quotes
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“Lively and often very funny…It is the story of how we made it up as we went along―of how things coul”d have been different and, perhaps, still might be.”
— New Yorker -
“[A] sense of revelation animates this provocative take on humankind’s social journey.”
— Science News -
“Graeber and Wengrow hope to show that human imagination and possibility is broader and more hopeful than we let ourselves believe.”
— NBC News
Awards
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A New York Times bestseller
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A Barnes & Noble bestseller
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A New York Times Bestseller in Audio
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A New York Times Book Review pick of Best Books Now in Paperback
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Finalist for the 2022 Orwell Prize
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Among shortlisted titles for Orwell Prize Shortlist, 2022
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Among longlisted titles for Barnes and Noble Best New Books of the Year, 2021
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Among longlisted titles for NPR Best Book of the Year, 2021
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Among longlisted titles for Amazon.com Best Books of the Year, 2021
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Among longlisted titles for Kirkus Reviews Best Books of the Year, 2021
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Among shortlisted titles for Orwell Prize Shortlist, 2022
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Among shortlisted titles for Orwell Prize Finalists, 2022
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Among longlisted titles for Barnes and Noble Best New Books of the Year, 2021
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Among longlisted titles for NPR Best Book of the Year, 2021
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Among longlisted titles for Amazon.com Best Books of the Year, 2021
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Among longlisted titles for Kirkus Reviews Best Books of the Year, 2021
The Dawn of Everything Listener Reviews
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Therese Charvet, 2/19/2023
About the Authors
David Graeber (1961-2020) was a professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics. He is the author of several books, including the New York Times bestseller The Dawn of Everything, as well as Debt: The First 5,000 Years and Bullshit Jobs: A Theory. He was a contributor to Harper’s Magazine, the London Guardian, and The Baffler. An iconic thinker and renowned activist, his early efforts in Zuccotti Park made Occupy Wall Street an era-defining movement.
David Wengrow, a New York Times bestselling author, is a professor of comparative archaeology at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London, and has been a visiting professor at New York University. He is the author of three books, including What Makes Civilization?. He conducts archaeological fieldwork in various parts of Africa and the Middle East.
About the Narrators
Mark Williams is professor emeritus of clinical psychology at the University of Oxford. He is a Fellow of the British Psychological Society, the Academy of Medical Sciences, and the British Academy. With his colleagues at Oxford and Cambridge, he co-developed mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) which clinical trials have shown to be as effective as medication and therapy for depression. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, working on behalf the National Health Service, now recommends MBCT as a primary treatment for depression
Malk Williams is a voice talent and Earphones Award–winning audiobook narrator.