A Brief History of the Human Race

by Michael A. Cook

Book Overview

Why has human history been crowded into the last few thousand years? Why has it happened at all? Could it have happened in a radically different way? What should we make of the disproportionate role of the West in shaping the world we currently live in? This witty, intelligent hopscotch through human history addresses these questions and more. Michael Cook sifts the human career on earth for the most telling nuggets and then uses them to elucidate...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393326454
• ISBN13: 9780393326451
• Release Date: February 2005
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 410 Pages
• Weight: 0.91 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 5.2" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

A Brief History of the Human Race

Should be mandatory in schools. Builds well on Jared Diamond`s (Guns, Germs, and Steel" -- I think that`s the correct title).

Easy read with interesting observations

As a small book, "A Brief History of the Human Race" leaves out more than it puts in about human history, but it's an interesting survey. The author's most profound point in my opinion was his obvious, but not often made, point that the principal characteristics of civilization in the unconnected new world and the old were the same: farming, cities, etc. That's profound when you think about it. Faced with two different environments, cultural, and geographic realities human beings responded in pretty much the same way. The author leavens this macro approach with a lot of micro points. Especially fascinating was his explanation of the marriage customs of Australian aborigines and his questions as to why they were so complex. He also takes a look at the similarities of snuff use around the world, calendars, Shang-dynasty bronzes, and the rise of Islam. All this combines to make for a potpourri of reading in which the similarities of humankind in broad ways are contrasted with his differences in mostly small, but sometimes large ways. Why, for example, did not sub-Saharan Africans take to the sea? The environmental determinism that this book promotes here and there owes a debt to Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel." This is a book that even if you're an ignoramus you can read and understand. If you're not an ignoramus, it's still interesting to dip into. There's nothing here that will cause you to jump and shout "Eureka" but it's an informative read with a take on human history that is sometimes provocative or unfamiliar. Smallchief

Thought provoking and well organized

True to his book's title, historian Cook takes on a daunting project and manages to chart a flow of global human history over the last 10,000 years, since the start of our present era of benign climate, the Holocene, and the consequent advent of farming. Only with farming can people begin to put down roots, feed larger numbers, accumulate pottery, build cities, and construct - or steal- a system of writing to leave an account of themselves for posterity.Farming began in the Near East - Mesopotamia (present day Iraq) - the birthplace of civilization, as every schoolchild learns. Interestingly, and logically, as Cook shows, the last place civilization caught on in the Old World was Western Europe - its best soils being too heavy for the available plow. When a heavier plow was developed halfway through the first millennium, cities sprouted and armies reaped the benefits.In broad strokes (with accompanying broad maps) Cook credits geography, climate and natural resources for driving early advances. Cultural flow is more problematic - why did Greek culture spread while Egyptian did not? Or why did Buddhism wander to China while Hinduism stayed put in India? Cook raises many such tantalizing questions and explores what evidence there is, offering cogent theories of his own. And he shows how technological advances shaped larger movements - expensive bronze favoring elite rule, while cheap iron empowered the masses, for instance.But if farming made civilization possible, monotheism began to shape the world as we know it. Christianity made its way through the scattered Jewish diaspora of the Roman Empire and was, as a political expedient, finally adopted as the state religion by Constantine. It then became attractive to frontier peoples as a trapping of civilization. Islam (Cook's specialty) solved a political difficulty by uniting two Arab tribes in Arabia to form a state, which then had the power to coordinate a wave of conquest, which resulted in the largest empire ever.Cook organizes his book in four parts. He begins with an overview of prehistory and inevitable development and concludes with a question, "Toward One World?" which embraces the Islamic expansion, the European expansion and the modern world. Three-part chapters within each of these sections focus on broad geographical masses and the cultural developments within, then draw it all together by homing in on particular features: the complicated marriageability rules among the Australian Aranda, Chinese ancestor worship, caste and sexuality in Hinduism, Greek pottery and more.Much is left out; much is simplified. Naturally. And the most interesting bits are the story-like chapter conclusions. But Cook uses these to illustrate his broader points and to show the individual peculiarities of human cultures. His writing is lucid, often witty, and seldom dry. And he gives an extensive "further reading" list for each chapter. A fine, thought-provoking, well-organized and succinct history of the las

The Forest, Not the Trees

I thoroughly enjoyed Michael Cook's "A Brief History of the Human Race." Although Cook does not address the details of world history, his book is a well-written exploration of broad themes and interesting questions. Much of what Cook has to say seems simple but is nonetheless thought provoking. For example, Cook poses the intriguing question of whether human history as we know it was, broadly speaking, the only kind of history that humans could have made. Specifically, was there anything inevitable about the development of farming and civilization, or might we have somehow "chosen" to remain nomads or hunter/gatherers or pastoralists? Having posed this question, Cook skillfuly compares the development of civilizations in both the new world and the old world, concluding that, given enough time and population, agriculture and a civilization of some sort are inevitable outcomes of human history. Cook's work explores a number of other interesting questions, such as why human history as we understand it appeared when it did (it has to do with the warm period that began about 10,000 years ago at the end of the last Ice Age) and why writing appeared first in civilized societies rather than earlier among hunter-gatherers. Whether you agree with Cook or not, his answers to the broad questions of history are quite interesting, and his writing style is clear and enjoyable.Keep in mind that Cook's focus is on the forest, not the trees. Although he discusses a few important historical events in order to make his points, "A Brief History of the Human Race" is a book about broad themes rather than a chronology of events. If you want to learn the basics of world history, you would probably do better to start with a book like J.M. Roberts' "A History of the World" (or his somewhat less weighty "Concise History of the World). But if you already know something about world history and you want to explore some big ideas that make sense of some of those facts and dates, Cook's "A Brief History of the Human Race" is a great place to start.

Briefly, in the Beginning There Was a Farmer

November 29, 2003SHELF LIFE Briefly, in the Beginning There Was a FarmerBy EDWARD ROTHSTEIN s a vantage point for writing the history of the human race," writes Michael Cook with a bit of defiance, "the present has very little to be said for it." )Unfortunately, as Mr. Cook, a professor of Near Eastern studies at Princeton University, knows, the present always has very little to be said for it when facing such a daunting task. But it is all anybody ever has. What is intriguing at this particular present is how worthwhile the task has come to seem. So Mr. Cook's "Brief History of the Human Race," a smart, literate survey of human life from Paleolithic times until 9/11, is joining an honorable recent tradition, which came into its own with Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel" and is continuously expanding with new compact histories of peoples, religions and cultures. Such an enterprise is a bit like setting out on an epic expedition with nothing more than a day pack and a hand full of pemmican, feeling confident that sustenance will be easily found. So Mr. Cook does not engage in ponderous Hegelian probings in search of a deeper order underlying apparent chaos. He has, he confesses, no "Grand Unified Theory," and, he adds, with characteristic humility, "If I had such a theory, it would almost certainly be wrong." That may even be the point. Mr. Cook is a scholar of Islamic history and was co-author, in the 1970's, of a fairly controversial theory about Islam's origins. . That background, along with political events of the last few years, seems to have given him a healthy respect for diversity and a healthy skepticism about received opinion. Mr. Cook's expertise also allows him to offer up little-known details, like the fact that in the mid-17th century, the Omanis, Muslims of southeastern Arabia, captured European ships, established a navy and colonized the western Indian Ocean "with a zest that put them at least in the same league as the Portuguese." His insights resonate with his discipline: he suggests that one little-recognized reason for the sudden 15th-century interest by Spain and Portugal in overseas exploration was to compete with the "geopolitical dominance of Islam." .But the very idea of a brief history of humanity also seems an appropriate response to contemporary crises. For the once-thriving intellectual explanations of the world's past, particularly Marxism and post-colonial theory, have come to seem threadbare. There should be a way to take into account the multiplicity of human cultures and to describe human weaknesses without the application of such highly charged systems, without simply invoking their now-familiar rosters of victims and heroes. This is just what Mr. Cook does. And by stepping back so far - the last 500 years take up no more than the final 50 pages - another kind of perspective develops. Humanity's written record, Mr. Cook points out, began only 5,000 years ago. Other evidence of human history barely reaches b