Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, alongside Harari’s Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Steven Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature, and Oded Galor’s The Journey of Humanity: The Origins of Wealth and Inequality, are, frankly, disastrous books. They are riddled with biases, questionable assumptions, racism, Eurocentrism, colonial perspectives, and a host of serious methodological problems. And, of course, they have sold enormously well and proved to be highly profitable—economically, at least.

Now compare them with David Graeber and David Wengrow’s rich and immensely rewarding The Dawn of Everything, which is a genuine masterpiece.