The Invention of Yesterday: A 50,000-Year History of Human Culture, Conflict, and Connection

Written by Tamim Ansary

Narrated by Tamim Ansary

Through vivid stories studded with insights, award-winning author Tamim Ansary tells the story of how humans invented history, from the Stone Age to the Virtual Age.

Fifty thousand years ago, we roamed the world as countless autonomous bands of hunter-gatherers, each one telling itself a story of the world with itself at the center. We used narratives to organize for survival and explain the unfathomable, and these stories evolved into the bases for cultures, empires, and civilizations. When disparate narratives collided, the encounters produced everything from confusion, chaos, and war to cultural efflorescence, religious awakenings, and intellectual breakthroughs.

Traveling across millennia and cultures, The Invention of Yesterday illuminates our propensity to invent a shared symbolic universe, and argues that world history is a narrative we’re constantly inventing.

“A well-written and valuable take on the diverse narratives that have shaped human history.” ―Kirkus Reviews

“Chatty, breezy, and capacious.” ―Publishers Weekly

“Terrific.” ―San Francisco Chronicle

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hachette Audio
• Release date: Oct 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9781549150043

Tamim Ansary

Tamim Ansary is the author of West of Kabul, East of New York: An Afghan American Story as well as numerous books for children. A columnist for Encarta, he lives in San Francisco with his wife and their two children. 

Reviews for The Invention of Yesterday

[jsburbidge · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Full of large and small-scale errors of fact in the service of simplified and simplistic narratives. Whenever the author moved into an area of which I had some knowledge, I started to raise my eyebrows.

A typical example at a small scale: how can I take anything seriously about the ancient Greeks from a writer who says that Achilles had a human mother and a divine father? Can one possibly even have skimmed the Iliad without knowing who Thetis is, or be accepted as speaking with any authority about Archaic Greece who has not? (And his historical treatment of Archaic Greece is grossly oversimplified and inaccurate.)

The author's history of the ancient middle East is naive at best; his treatment of Classical Rome and the rise of Christianity poorly informed.

I could continue the list but have not the patience to do so; the energy is too great for the end involved.

[paul_s-289480 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I liked the writing but the whole book feels like an introduction to a book I thought was going to follow. It connects the world history across time and space but stops at these observations without going any further into explanations or predictions.

[jmoncton_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This was a fantastic narrative of human history starting from the beginning of human civilization until now. What Tamim Ansary does that is different than most history books is rather than tell history from a single part of the world, he tells it with a global perspective and shows how the sequence of events that are happening in one part of the world impact another region all the way across the globe. It's such a novel way to look at our history and I discovered many gems of information. He also has a light and humorous style that makes this feel more like a story than a history lesson. Excellent non-fiction!

[lauriebrown54 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Like the butterfly effect, what happened in China affected what happened in Rome; what the Vikings did affected the world. No culture is ‘pure’; every nation has been changed by others. We are all interconnected; progress does not take place in a vacuum.

The average world history book aimed at the English speaking world tends to start with the Fertile Crescent, give a fair bit of time to the Greeks and Romans, and then go straight to Western Europe for the rest of the book, with some time spent on North and South America. Ansary looks beyond those, and focuses mainly on connections. The far flung Roman Empire put many different cultures and religions in touch with each other, as did the Vikings, and then the Crusades. When Columbus discovered the Americas, a whole new world of cultures, foods, animals, and inventions collided and merged. The advent of factory work changed how the world worked, as much or more than the transistor did. Communications and management changed the world as much as armies and navies did.

The book reminded me of “Guns, Germs, and Steel” in the way the author looked at things other than kings and armies as forces that shaped our civilization. Ansary is a bit more casually written, at times drifting into slang, but the thinking and writing is solid. I enjoyed this book a lot, and it taught me things I’d not thought of before.

[bookboy804 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Excellent Big Picture history that is as insightful and eye-opening and well-written as Sapiens by Harari. Makes an excellent companion volume to that work. I would have preferred annotation and documentation, especially given some of the generalizations that no doubt have challengers. I had the same issue with Harari's book. Other than that caveat, highly recommended.

[darcia_10 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I'm not sure I've ever used the word 'enthralling' to describe a nonfiction book, but The Invention of Yesterday is just that.

The writing is masterful. Tamim Ansary takes us on a journey through 50,000 years of human history. He's like a tour guide, showing us how civilization evolved to where we are now and pointing out the connecting influences from one culture to the next. His approach is unique and thoroughly fascinating.

While Ansary covers an immense amount of material, I never felt overwhelmed by it all. The book's layout is easy to follow, flowing perfectly from one topic to the next.

Clearly this book holds appeal for readers interested in history. But it's so much more. This book is for anyone interested in humanity, our connectedness, how and why our different cultures evolved as they did, the way we identify with our origins, where we came from, and where we're headed.

*I received an ARC in exchange for my honest review.*