The World Until Yesterday; What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies

Diamond, Jared

ISBN 10: 0670024813 / ISBN 13: 9780670024810

Published by Viking Press, New York, 2012

About this Item

499pp. 8vo. Quarter bound paper and cloth over boards, stamped spine. Author has signed his name neatly on the title page. Book has a complete number line from 1-10, is unread, unclipped, unmarked, and has a removeable jacket protector. Spine ends slightly pushed. Author's initials blind stamped on front boards. Removeable Signed sticker on bottom of dj protector at spine heel. Author also wrote "Collapse" and "Guns, Germs, and Steel." Table of Contents shows a Prologue; Part One - Setting theStage by Dividing Space (one chapter); Part Two - Peace and War (three chapters); Part Three - Young and Old (two chapters); Part Four - Danger and Response (two chapters); Part Five - Religion, Language, and Health (three chapters); Epilogue; Acknowledgments; Further Readings; Index; Illustration Credits. Maps by Matt Zebrowski, and color and black and white photographs. Seller Inventory # 0003279

Bibliographic Details

Title: The World Until Yesterday; What Can We Learn...

Publisher: Viking Press, New York

Publication Date: 2012

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: Fine

Dust Jacket Condition: fine

Signed: Signed by Author(s)

Edition: First edition. First Printing.

About this title

Synopsis:

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 yesterday—in evolutionary time—when 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 years—a past that has mostly vanished—and considers what the differences between that past and our present mean for our lives today.
This is Jared Diamond’s 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 doesn’t romanticize traditional societies—after all, we are shocked by some of their practices—but 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.

About the Author:

Jared Diamond is a professor of geography at the University of California, Los Angeles. He began his scientific career in physiology and expanded into evolutionary biology and biogeography. Among his many awards are the National Medal of Science, the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement, Japan’s Cosmos Prize, a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, and the Lewis Thomas Prize honoring the Scientist as Poet, presented by The Rockefeller University. His previous books include Why Is Sex Fun?, The Third Chimpanzee, Collapse, The World Until Yesterday, and Guns, Germs, and Steel, winner of the Pulitzer Prize.