Price:
(as of – Details)
From language to culture to cultural collision: the story of how humans invented history, from the Stone Age to the Virtual Age
Traveling across millennia, weaving the experiences and world views of cultures both extinct and extant, The Invention of Yesterday shows that the engine of history is not so much heroic (battles won), geographic (farmers thrive), or anthropogenic (humans change the planet) as it is narrative.
Many thousands of years ago, when we existed only as countless small autonomous bands of hunter-gatherers widely distributed through the wilderness, we began inventing stories–to organize for survival, to find purpose and meaning, to explain the unfathomable. Ultimately these became the basis for empires, civilizations, and cultures. And when various narratives began to collide and overlap, the encounters produced everything from confusion, chaos, and war to cultural efflorescence, religious awakenings, and intellectual breakthroughs.
Through vivid stories studded with insights, Tamim Ansary illuminates the world-historical consequences of the unique human capacity to invent and communicate abstract ideas. In doing so, he also explains our ever-more-intertwined present: the narratives now shaping us, the reasons we still battle one another, and the future we may yet create.
Publisher : PublicAffairs (October 1, 2019)
Language : English
Hardcover : 448 pages
ISBN-10 : 1610397967
ISBN-13 : 978-1610397964
Item Weight : 1.55 pounds
Dimensions : 6.5 x 1.7 x 9.6 inches
Customers say
Customers find the book insightful and enjoyable to read, with an interesting approach to world history. They describe the writing style as approachable, friendly, and entertaining. The author guides the reader through dense subject matter in a storytelling manner. Overall, customers consider it a great book describing human history from the Stone Age to today.
AI-generated from the text of customer reviews