Not an easy read, but an eye-opening account of significant scientific advances that throw a spectacular, often unexpected...
A surprising new description of how Homo sapiens originated in Africa and spread around the world.
In his first book, Reich (Genetics/Harvard Medical School) describes the revolution in his specialty, genomics, the branch of molecular biology that analyzes our genes, units of DNA that transmit hereditary information from parent to offspring. Since 2001, when scientists sequenced the human genome for the first time, technology has massively reduced the cost of the procedure. At the same time, researchers have become incredibly adept at extracting DNA from bones as old as 400,000 years. Readers who pay close attention will understand Reich’s explanation of what this reveals. As generations pass, strings of DNA in the genome split and recombine, and errors (mutations) appear in individual genes. Comparing one genome to another reveals the relationship between populations more accurately than comparing bones. Mutations appear at a regular rate, allowing researchers to measure time elapsed as evolution proceeds. “Since 2009,” writes the author, “…whole-genome data have begun to challenge long-held views in archaeology, history, anthropology, and even linguistics—and to resolve controversies in those fields. The ancient DNA revolution is rapidly disrupting our assumptions about the past.” Most agree that migrants from Turkey brought agriculture to Europe about 8,000 years ago. They once agreed that these migrants brought Indo-European languages spoken throughout most Western nations, but the studies in genomics reveal that the languages arrived with later migrants: a “ghost population” from the Russian steppes who also moved east and contributed genes to American Indians. Throughout the book, Reich includes numerous timelines, graphs, maps, and diagrams to assist readers in visualizing his material, but those who are not scientifically inclined may find the narrative difficult to follow—though ultimately rewarding.
Not an easy read, but an eye-opening account of significant scientific advances that throw a spectacular, often unexpected light on human prehistory.Pub Date: March 27, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-101-87032-7
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: Feb. 14, 2018
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics,...
A provocative analysis of the parallels between Donald Trump’s ascent and the fall of other democracies.
Following the last presidential election, Levitsky (Transforming Labor-Based Parties in Latin America, 2003, etc.) and Ziblatt (Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy, 2017, etc.), both professors of government at Harvard, wrote an op-ed column titled, “Is Donald Trump a Threat to Democracy?” The answer here is a resounding yes, though, as in that column, the authors underscore their belief that the crisis extends well beyond the power won by an outsider whom they consider a demagogue and a liar. “Donald Trump may have accelerated the process, but he didn’t cause it,” they write of the politics-as-warfare mentality. “The weakening of our democratic norms is rooted in extreme partisan polarization—one that extends beyond policy differences into an existential conflict over race and culture.” The authors fault the Republican establishment for failing to stand up to Trump, even if that meant electing his opponent, and they seem almost wistfully nostalgic for the days when power brokers in smoke-filled rooms kept candidacies restricted to a club whose members knew how to play by the rules. Those supporting the candidacy of Bernie Sanders might take as much issue with their prescriptions as Trump followers will. However, the comparisons they draw to how democratic populism paved the way toward tyranny in Peru, Venezuela, Chile, and elsewhere are chilling. Among the warning signs they highlight are the Republican Senate’s refusal to consider Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee as well as Trump’s demonization of political opponents, minorities, and the media. As disturbing as they find the dismantling of Democratic safeguards, Levitsky and Ziblatt suggest that “a broad opposition coalition would have important benefits,” though such a coalition would strike some as a move to the center, a return to politics as usual, and even a pragmatic betrayal of principles.
The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics, rather than in the consensus it is not likely to build.Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6293-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
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