The World Until Yesterday

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.

出版者:Viking Adult

作者:Jared Diamond

页数:512

出版时间:2012-12-31

价格:USD 36.00

装帧:Hardcover

isbn号码:9780670024810

图书标签:社会学历史人类学JaredDiamond自然科学贾雷德·戴蒙德社科英文

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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.

读后感

在传统时代，人们常常认为，在远古曾有一个伊甸园般的完美社会；而到了近现代，越来越多的人开始相信，真正的完美社会将在未来出现。当然，也曾有一些人认为，乌托邦在这个时代就有，但却是在远方的某个异邦或海岛上。总之，它不会是此时此地的社会——毕竟，在我们眼皮底下的...  

无论从哪个角度来看，贾雷德• 戴蒙德的名字是和《枪炮、病菌与钢铁》这本书紧密联系在一起的。这位加州大学洛杉矶分校的地理学教授以对人类文明演变发展的独到观察和颠覆性见解而声名远播，他的写作横跨历史学、人类学、语言学地理学、遗传学、生理学等众多领域，行文明晰流...  

如果不是知识的积累推动人类创建了一个文明，谁又能够知道世界存在着一个历史。单个的生命存在短短的一瞬，何以知道百万年的历史。就像戴老师所提到的，不仅部落人不知道几十公里以外的世界，就连中世纪的英国农民也一辈子没有离开过自己的家乡。所以新几内亚人在初次见到白人...  

读完此书觉得生活在现代社会比较幸福，传统社群需要“神经质”才能不早死。在意外死因中，倒下的树是多个社群的致死原因，大概等同车祸。 新几内亚北部的一个部落流传着一则大蛋蛋男神的传说：丛林里人们围绕着一棵巨大的铁树居住，这好似佛教中的须弥山，可见围绕中心的意识是...  

用户评价

感觉third ape 是他的巅峰，这个依旧没能超越，已科普

Jared Diamond真是越来越能瞎扯了。这特么也能算是人类学作品？！

適合非學術性讀者去看, 因為沒有很多深奧的專有名詞, 而且加了很多作者自己的故事。雖然有五百多頁, 但看起來沒有很吃力。

开篇就是一个对一个基本问题的陈述：为什么现代人可以放心大胆地在街上走，甚至出了国，到了一个完全陌生的地方也是这样？这个调调我喜欢，它暗示着一个道理：很多似乎理所应当无须探究的事情有着深刻的内涵与精彩的发展历程。

2016年读的这本书，不如Guns, Germs and Steel印象深刻