Why am I passionate about this?

The search for meaning in history is all part of the search for meaning in life. Whether archaeologists or historians, economists or physicists, they are not just looking for artefacts when digging in the dirt or scanning the skies, they are looking for evidence to piece together a bigger picture—meaning in the minutiae. I’m sceptical, but the philosophy of history remains a fascinating subject, which is why I’ve explored ideas about civilization, progress, and progressive history in a number of books and articles. My primary concern about teleological accounts of history is that they tend to deny people's agency, especially non-Western peoples.


I wrote

The Strange Persistence of Universal History in Political Thought

By Brett Bowden,

Book cover of The Strange Persistence of Universal History in Political Thought

What is my book about?

Prominent in Western political thought since the middle of the eighteenth century, the idea of universal history holds that all…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

Brett Bowden Why did I love this book?

This book has quickly become a bestseller and instant classic. Quite remarkable for such a hefty tome. As the title suggests, it is a new history of humankind; and when the authors say new, they mean new. Drawing on a wide range of material from anthropology and archaeology, Graeber and Wengrow set out to turn our long-held ideas about human history on their head. The traditional narrative of a neat step-by-step linear history is called into serious question. The alternative interpretations of the historical record are fascinating. Not every reader will be convinced by it all, some won’t be convinced by much, and some will likely be outraged. No matter, you cannot help but admire the ambition and originality of the undertaking.

By David Graeber, David Wengrow,

Why should I read it?

18 authors picked The Dawn of Everything as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

A dramatically new understanding of human history, challenging our most fundamental assumptions about social evolution—from the development of agriculture and cities to the origins of the state, democracy, and inequality—and revealing new possibilities for human emancipation.

For generations, our remote ancestors have been cast as primitive and childlike—either free and equal innocents, or thuggish and warlike. Civilization, we are told, could be achieved only by sacrificing those original freedoms or, alternatively, by taming our baser instincts. David Graeber and David Wengrow show how such theories first emerged in the eighteenth century as a conservative reaction…


Book cover of Europe and the People Without History

Brett Bowden Why did I love this book?

This is another important work by an anthropologist challenging the genealogy of the West and its ideas and institutions. It exposes the myth of history as a supposed moral success story: ancient Greece… Rome… Christian Europe… Renaissance… Enlightenment… liberal democracy… the pursuit of happiness, etc. Wolf systematically highlights why this is a flawed and fraught notion, especially for those people who do not fit neatly into the schema.

By Eric R. Wolf,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Europe and the People Without History as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Offering insight and equal consideration into the societies of the "civilized" and "uncivilized" world, "Europe and the People Without History" deftly explores the historical trajectory of so-called modern globalization. In this foundational text about the development of the global political economy, Eric R. Wolf challenges the long-held anthropological notion that non-European cultures and people were isolated and static entities before the advent of European colonialism and imperialism. Ironically referred to as "the People Without History" by Wolf, these societies before active colonization possessed perpetually changing, reactionary cultures and were indeed just as intertwined into the processes of the pre-Columbian global…


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Book cover of Return to Hope Creek

Return to Hope Creek By Alyssa J. Montgomery,

Return to Hope Creek is a second-chance rural romance set in Australia.

Stella Simpson's career and engagement are over. She returns to the rural community of Hope Creek to heal, unaware her high school and college sweetheart, Mitchell Scott, has also moved back to town to do some healing of…

Book cover of Art, Politics, and Development: How Linear Perspective Shaped Policies in the Western World

Brett Bowden Why did I love this book?

I love the way this book brings together two seemingly unrelated topics, art, and socio-political organization, to offer a new perspective on the development of human societies—linear, of course. The policies and practices of development agencies do not just draw on the latest fads of economics, rather, our thinking about the shape and trajectory of ideal societies has long been influenced by the way we quite literally see and perceive the world.

By Philipp H. Lepenies,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Art, Politics, and Development as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In his groundbreaking study, Art, Politics and Development, Philipp Lepenies contributes to the ongoing controversy about why the track record of development aid is so dismal. He asserts that development aid policies are grounded in a specific way of literally looking at the world. This "worldview" is the result of a mental conditioning that began with the invention of linear perspective in Renaissance art. It not only triggered the emergence of modern science and brought forth our Western notion of progress, but ultimately, development as well.Art, Politics, and Development examines this process by pulling from a range of disciplines, including…


Book cover of New Worlds for Old: Reports from the New World and Their Effect on the Development of Social Thought in Europe, 1500-1800

Brett Bowden Why did I love this book?

We know that the arrival of Europeans in the Americas had significant impacts, many of them negative, on the peoples of the New World. Encounters with Amerindians were also highly influential in shaping ideas about human development and universal history. It was not a one-way street, however, reports from missionaries, trappers, explorers, soldiers, and settlers about what they saw in the New World served to challenge and shape the thinking of Europe’s intellectual elite, especially concerning Native American ideas about freedom, equality, and community. Thirty-five years after the publication of this book, Graeber and Wengrow returned to the idea of “Indigenous critique” for one of the more contentious sections in their New History

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Book cover of The Deviant Prison: Philadelphia's Eastern State Penitentiary and the Origins of America's Modern Penal System, 1829-1913

The Deviant Prison By Ashley Rubin,

What were America's first prisons like? How did penal reformers, prison administrators, and politicians deal with the challenges of confining human beings in long-term captivity as punishment--what they saw as a humane intervention?

The Deviant Prison centers on one early prison: Eastern State Penitentiary. Built in Philadelphia, one of the…

Book cover of The German Conception of History: The National Tradition of Historical Thought from Herder to the Present

Brett Bowden Why did I love this book?

It is difficult to settle on just five books; I include Iggers here because this book transcends its primary subject, German historiography. It offers an insight into some of the key thinkers that have helped to shape predominant and pervasive thinking about human progress and socio-political development. Thinkers such as Kant and Herder, Hegel and Schiller. It is important to have a good understanding of the foundations of a train of thought, and Iggers knows his subject matter well and astutely highlights the various strengths and weaknesses. 

By Georg G. Iggers,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The German Conception of History as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This is the first comprehensive critical examination in any language of the German national tradition of historiography. It analyzes the basic theoretical assumptions of the German historians of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and relates these assumptions to political thought and action.
The German national tradition of historiography had its beginnings in the reaction against the Enlightenment and the French Revolution of 1789. This historiography rejected the rationalistic theory of natural law as universally valid and held that all human values must be understood within the context of the historical flux. But it maintained at the same time the Lutheran…


Explore my book 😀

The Strange Persistence of Universal History in Political Thought

By Brett Bowden,

Book cover of The Strange Persistence of Universal History in Political Thought

What is my book about?

Prominent in Western political thought since the middle of the eighteenth century, the idea of universal history holds that all peoples can be situated in the narrative of history on a continuum between a start and an end point, between the savage state of nature and civilized modernity. Despite various critiques, the underlying teleological principle still prevails in much contemporary thinking and policy planning, including post-conflict peace-building and development theory and practice. Anathema to contemporary ideals of pluralism and multiculturalism, universal history means that not everyone gets to write their own story, only a privileged few. For the rest, history and future are taken out of their hands, subsumed and assimilated into other people’s narrative.

Book cover of The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity
Book cover of Europe and the People Without History
Book cover of Art, Politics, and Development: How Linear Perspective Shaped Policies in the Western World

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