A Year in Reading: Stephen Dodson

and ’s is the most intellectually exciting book I’ve read in years, and I hope its insights spread widely through reviews and allusions even among those who don’t read it. The subtitle is misleading in that it suggests a traditional history, with a chronological progression and a bunch of names and dates.  is something different: in essence, it’s an extended argument against the assumptions we make when we discuss the long sweep of history, using recent findings at the intersection of archeology and anthropology. We’ve been shining the same light on human history for centuries; Graeber and Wengrow shine a different light and show us different possibilities. Perhaps the most concise formulation of their approach is