Reviews for Toward a New Civilization: Why We Must Tame Our Instincts to Save Our World

The average rating for Toward a New Civilization: Why We Must Tame Our Instincts to Save Our World based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-03-29 00:00:00 Gary Barnes Obviously this book is dated, but it's pretty good. It covers the ancient and modern history of the country in a fairly short volume. It includes several interesting anecdotes and points out where the stories may be inaccurate. It understandably skips over certain parts of the history and describes others more expansively. The problem is that the choices of what to emphasize seem random to me, and it did not give a good sense at all about what it was skipping over. I was left with a piecemeal sense of the history of this land that lacked an overall sense of the arc of its development.

Review # 2 was written on 2017-11-21 00:00:00 Daniel Chilbert Mr Morrow's review here is exactly right. Some great stuff here, but the least satisfactory chapter is the final one, written by the co-author Elizabeth Monroe on the eve of the Italian invasion in 1935. It is a salutary reminder that being close to events is not always the best way to see them in their proper context. At one point Dr Monroe writes that "Ras Kassa of Tigray" would likely prove to be of doubtful loyalty in the coming struggle. Ras Seyoum Mangasha of Tigray did indeed defect to the Italians, but Ras Kassa was one of Haile Selassie's most loyal and devoted followers. This kind of thing does not fill one with confidence that the judgements expressed are very accurate. (I'd like to know more about Dr Monroe, though. She was a Fellow of St Anthony's - and therefore almost certainly a spy - and a friend of the traitor Philby - could she have been a Comintern agent as well?)