Cycle History: Proceedings of the 6th International Cycle History Conference, Stellenbosch, ... Book

I am conflicted about this book: the first 2/3, when Flannery discusses the ecological history of North America up until 1492, gets 5 stars in my book, while all the politically charged clap-trap in the final third would get 2 stars (and even there I am probably being generous).

Flannery introduced a couple of interesting notions that I'd never really thought about:North America's inverted wedge exaggerates global temperature shifts, impacting the ecological history of this otherwise fertile continent for at least the last 65 million years; and the driving force behind human exploration for at least 13,000 years has been to sate our virtually unlimited lust as a carnivorous primate to kill other creatures. Flannery got me to think a bit more deeply about the middle American landscape, and that has made me love it all the more deeply.

It is when Flannery starts talking about human societies that he loses me. Besides his selective use of facts to push all the obvious buttons about the evils of American capitalism that the well-kept show ponies in academia (like himself) love to push, Flannery's biological determinism may be trendy, but it is intellectually weak. Flannery's own oratory refutes his larger point in a single sentence: the most powerful force in literate societies is language, because "words-especially written words-bind us in a way nothing else can." Thus our ideas can override our biology. Hey dude, you just refuted your own argument. Game, set, match. Next subject.

But I still give this 4 stars, because the first part of the book actually got me to look at the world in a new way. Which is no small thing.