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

THE NEW BOOK FROM THE AUTHOR OF COLLAPSE AND GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL Most of us take for granted the features of our modern society, from air travel and cell phones to literacy and obesity. Yet for nearly all of its six million years of existence, human society knew none of these things. Jared Diamond draws on fieldwork with traditional societies—Pacific Islanders, the Inuit, the Amazonian Indians, and the San people of the Kalahari Desert—and finds many examples from which we can learn about universal issues such as parenting, treating the elderly, resolving disputes, assessing risk, and maintaining health and well-being. • He is also a Pulitzer Prize winner for Guns, Germs, and Steel.