Judge Not

Felipe Fernández-Armesto’s Civilizations is one of those grand, all-encompassing histories that many non-historians find appealing. It makes some very alluring promises. “My purpose,” Femández-Armesto explains, “is to change the way we think about civilization: to present it as a relationship between one species and the rest of nature, an environment refashioned to suit human uses.” It takes an especially thoughtful inquiry to transform how we view civilization, to make us rethink not only what we know but how we know.

“We cannot get out of the ecosystem in which we are linked, the ‘chain of being’ which binds us to all the other biota,” he writes. “Our species belongs in the great animal continuum. The environments we fashion for ourselves are gouged or cobbled out of what nature has given us.” He traces the histories of how various civilizations built themselves out of their natural environs—from the vanished Mongol cities of the Eurasian steppe and the Venetians defying their “water margins” to the Samoyeds who inhabit the “waste land” of northern Scandinavia. All of this is very colorful and, at times, astute. The author’s brief discussion of Las Vegas—“The new skyline is dominated by an electrified rip-off of the Great Pyramid of Cheops, a pimple itching at the civilized tradition”—is both funny and clever. His thoughtful, lengthier investigation of island life, particularly his assertion that Hawaii and Easter Island benefited culturally from their relative isolation, is likewise illuminating.

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Peter Savodnik

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Felipe Fernández-Armesto’s Civilizations is one of those grand, all-encompassing histories that many non-historians find appealing. It makes some very alluring promises. “My purpose,” Femández-Armesto explains, “is to change the way we think about civilization: to present it as a relationship between one species and the rest of nature, an environment refashioned to suit human uses.” It takes an especially thoughtful inquiry to transform how we view civilization, to make us rethink not only what we know but how we know.

“We cannot get out of the ecosystem in which we are linked, the ‘chain of being’ which binds us to all the other biota,” he writes. “Our species belongs in the great animal continuum. The environments we fashion for ourselves are gouged or cobbled out of what nature has given us.” He traces the histories of how various civilizations built themselves out of their natural environs—from the vanished Mongol cities of the Eurasian steppe and the Venetians defying their “water margins” to the Samoyeds who inhabit the “waste land” of northern Scandinavia. All of this is very colorful and, at times, astute. The author’s brief discussion of Las Vegas—“The new skyline is dominated by an electrified rip-off of the Great Pyramid of Cheops, a pimple itching at the civilized tradition”—is both funny and clever. His thoughtful, lengthier investigation of island life, particularly his assertion that Hawaii and Easter Island benefited culturally from their relative isolation, is likewise illuminating.