The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies? by Jared Diamond

[Aaron]

Just finished reading Jared Diamond's new book The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies?. The book explores our traditional way of life (prior to the onset of civilization) and makes the argument that though civilization does bring it with it many important benefits, there are several areas wherein traditional practices represent an improvement over how we do things in the modern world, and that these practices could (and should) be incorporated into our modern way of life (both at the personal and societal level). The areas include conflict resolution, child care, treatment of the elderly, approaching risk and health. The book is very illuminating. I've written a full executive summary of it available here: http://newbooksinbrief.com/2013/01/15...

Cheers,
Aaron