CULTURE: A New World History, by Martin Puchner (Ithaka Press, $39.99)
Who is Martin Puchner, whose book boldly asserts that it’s “a new world history”? Is it even possible to traverse, in a single volume, the evolution of cultures during the human history of all the world?
No. Puchner, a German-born comparative English literature professor at Harvard University, makes a valiant attempt, but he ignores, for instance, the systematic suppression of the native tribes of his adopted land, as well as its slave trade.process that ravaged the people and cultures of Australasia and the Pacific. So let’s leave “world” out of it.