Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States

Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States

Scott, James C.

Paperback

EvolutionGeneral World History

Publisher Price: $22.00

ISBN10: 030024021X
ISBN13: 9780300240214
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: Jul 24 2018
Pages: 336
Weight: 0.76
Height: 0.90 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.20
Language: English
An Economist Best History Book 2017

History as it should be written.--Barry Cunliffe, Guardian

Scott hits the nail squarely on the head by exposing the staggering price our ancestors paid for civilization and political order.--Walter Scheidel, Financial Times

Why did humans abandon hunting and gathering for sedentary communities dependent on livestock and cereal grains, and governed by precursors of today's states? Most people believe that plant and animal domestication allowed humans, finally, to settle down and form agricultural villages, towns, and states, which made possible civilization, law, public order, and a presumably secure way of living. But archaeological and historical evidence challenges this narrative. The first agrarian states, says James C. Scott, were born of accumulations of domestications: first fire, then plants, livestock, subjects of the state, captives, and finally women in the patriarchal family--all of which can be viewed as a way of gaining control over reproduction.

Scott explores why we avoided sedentism and plow agriculture, the advantages of mobile subsistence, the unforeseeable disease epidemics arising from crowding plants, animals, and grain, and why all early states are based on millets and cereal grains and unfree labor. He also discusses the barbarians who long evaded state control, as a way of understanding continuing tension between states and nonsubject peoples.

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