I loved Debt for the ideas, but I abandoned this since it seemed to be pushing their politics so hard. I've read Zinn, GGS, later pop science anthropology books, 1491, 1493, as well as kept up with john hawks, razib, etc as far as paleogenetics; I wanted to like this book but a lot of it didn't add up - the theory was so complicated and specific. There also didn't seem to be much room left for the evolution of larger scale social structures... yet to me the way things went in history seems obvious. Most of the actors and roles in early human history have cultures shaped by their survival imperatives - and the variety of belief systems we know about match the needs of that culture. Anyway, I would love to hear a good defense or explanation of the book, to make sure I haven't missed anything! I abandoned it possibly 1/3 in, and then read reviews, which mostly confirmed what I had been thinking, so I never went back.

I’m almost done with it and I’ll say that I hated the first part, found many of the specific examples interesting throughout the middle, and although there are some interesting insights later, it’s an utter failure from a narrative standpoint as a whole. It really would have benefited from a much stronger editor, if there even was one at all.