Oh, how disappointing this sounds! Taking on the economic focus on scarcity (not mention productivity) is fine by me, but I can’t imagine talking about work without a look at psychological attitudes and culture shifts over the centuries- it’s not enough to say that agricultural labor is grueling so it took a long time to become the norm...
Indeed - I must say I’m amazed by your ability to forge through such academic books (especially the bad ones) so quickly - maybe even a little awed :-)
There are reedited reviews from over the last 25 years. Amazon cancelled me, so I am recycling the better ones. Normally, I read about 5 books per month. You?
Oh, now I get it! But Amazon cancelled you? Inquiring minds want to know why :-) As for books per month, I'd say it's more like 2 or 3 for me, and that goes way down during my teaching semester. But I'm always reading lots of nonfiction feature articles...
I think it was because I was writing sarcastic things about Trump, I was warned a few times not to go "against standards" but no one ever got specific enough. At a stroke, they cut 2,400 reviews, about 1/4 of them were really carefully written. By the way, is Nick in college? What's the latest? Will just started working as a medical doctor in Durham, UK!
Wow, that Amazon story deserves to be told — meanwhile, Nick will start his last year of college at Fordham soon, after spending a year of study abroad in Paris — congrats to Will!
Thanks for this one. As an Industrial-Organizational Psychologist who has published about the evolutionary psychology of work (APA, 2022) and comes from a U of Chicago/Harvard economics family, I am still unhappy that economists and anthropologists have managed to miss applied psychology and Behavioral Economics, and particularly Kahneman's (2003) Nobel Prize for establishing that the "rational man" is a grossly simplistic myth. It sounds like this author gives Kahneman a bit of lip service, then devolves to anthropology (and entropy!?) to argue that work has "evolved". Well, folks, how about asking people who actually study work?
I also love "The Dawn of Everything", partly because it debunks the usual anthropological myths, but also because it flirts with the assumption that our actual advantage as a species is our spectacular capacity for social organization. My book is clearer and more explicit about this advantage (came out at about the same time), and does more to try to understand how it happens as a practical matter. Graeber and Wengrow would probably appreciate all the postits in my copy.
Just bought it (Pirata). Also, I wondered whether Wengrow did as Hernstein did to Murray (Bell Curve) and publish only because his writing partner no longer had a say. After reading “The Dawn…”, I would say that the answer is a pretty solid “no”. It reads far too much like a wide-ranging dialoque between two very deep thinkers, rather than the attempt to confirm the notion of a (racist, cupiditous) true believer, “approved” by a dead expert.
Oh, how disappointing this sounds! Taking on the economic focus on scarcity (not mention productivity) is fine by me, but I can’t imagine talking about work without a look at psychological attitudes and culture shifts over the centuries- it’s not enough to say that agricultural labor is grueling so it took a long time to become the norm...
Yep, pretty silly thing by an intellectual.
Indeed - I must say I’m amazed by your ability to forge through such academic books (especially the bad ones) so quickly - maybe even a little awed :-)
There are reedited reviews from over the last 25 years. Amazon cancelled me, so I am recycling the better ones. Normally, I read about 5 books per month. You?
Oh, now I get it! But Amazon cancelled you? Inquiring minds want to know why :-) As for books per month, I'd say it's more like 2 or 3 for me, and that goes way down during my teaching semester. But I'm always reading lots of nonfiction feature articles...
I think it was because I was writing sarcastic things about Trump, I was warned a few times not to go "against standards" but no one ever got specific enough. At a stroke, they cut 2,400 reviews, about 1/4 of them were really carefully written. By the way, is Nick in college? What's the latest? Will just started working as a medical doctor in Durham, UK!
Wow, that Amazon story deserves to be told — meanwhile, Nick will start his last year of college at Fordham soon, after spending a year of study abroad in Paris — congrats to Will!
Thanks for this one. As an Industrial-Organizational Psychologist who has published about the evolutionary psychology of work (APA, 2022) and comes from a U of Chicago/Harvard economics family, I am still unhappy that economists and anthropologists have managed to miss applied psychology and Behavioral Economics, and particularly Kahneman's (2003) Nobel Prize for establishing that the "rational man" is a grossly simplistic myth. It sounds like this author gives Kahneman a bit of lip service, then devolves to anthropology (and entropy!?) to argue that work has "evolved". Well, folks, how about asking people who actually study work?
I also love "The Dawn of Everything", partly because it debunks the usual anthropological myths, but also because it flirts with the assumption that our actual advantage as a species is our spectacular capacity for social organization. My book is clearer and more explicit about this advantage (came out at about the same time), and does more to try to understand how it happens as a practical matter. Graeber and Wengrow would probably appreciate all the postits in my copy.
Graeber died right after publication. I am tempted ot get his last book, on pirates as Enlightenment avatars.
Just bought it (Pirata). Also, I wondered whether Wengrow did as Hernstein did to Murray (Bell Curve) and publish only because his writing partner no longer had a say. After reading “The Dawn…”, I would say that the answer is a pretty solid “no”. It reads far too much like a wide-ranging dialoque between two very deep thinkers, rather than the attempt to confirm the notion of a (racist, cupiditous) true believer, “approved” by a dead expert.