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THE WORLD UNTIL YESTERDAY
By: Jared Diamond
What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies?
Viking
January 2013
On Sale: January 1, 2013
499 pages
ISBN: 0670024813
EAN: 9780670024810
Kindle: B008EKOO46
Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction
Most of us take for granted the features of our modern society, from air travel and telecommunications to literacy and obesity. Yet for nearly all of its six million years of existence, human society had none of these things. While the gulf that divides us from our primitive ancestors may seem unbridgeably wide, we can glimpse much of our former lifestyle in those largely traditional societies still or recently in existence. Societies like those of the New Guinea Highlanders remind us that it was only yesterdayβin evolutionary timeβwhen everything changed and that we moderns still possess bodies and social practices often better adapted to traditional than to modern conditions.
The World Until Yesterday provides a mesmerizing firsthand picture of the human past as it had been for millions of yearsβa past that has mostly vanishedβand considers what the differences between that past and our present mean for our lives today.
This is Jared Diamondβs most personal book to date, as he draws extensively from his decades of field work in the Pacific islands, as well as evidence from Inuit, Amazonian Indians, Kalahari San people, and others. Diamond doesnβt romanticize traditional societiesβafter all, we are shocked by some of their practicesβbut he finds that their solutions to universal human problems such as child rearing, elder care, dispute resolution, risk, and physical fitness have much to teach us. A characteristically provocative, enlightening, and entertaining book, The World Until Yesterday will be essential and delightful reading.
 Media BuzzTavis Smiley - May 27, 2013
This American Life - March 30, 2013
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