The best hunter gatherer books

In the compelling popular science tradition of Sapiens and Guns, Germs, and Steel, a groundbreaking and eye-opening exploration that applies evolutionary science to provide a new perspective on human psychology, revealing how major challenges from our past have shaped some of the most fundamental aspects of our being.

A great many people are fascinated by food – just look at the viewing figures for programmes like MasterChef – but they often know little or nothing about our oldest and most important industry, which is agriculture. This was what stimulated me to write Land of Plenty. During the course of a year, I travelled the length and breadth of Britain talking to the people that supply us with our daily bread and butter, meat and fish, fruit and vegetables. There are certainly many things wrong with the way we use the land, but there is much to celebrate too. Land of Plenty is a homage to the people who have shaped our countryside.

The Eyes of the Leopard is a historical adventure novel for young and old readers based on a lifetime of research into hunting and gathering societies by archaeologist Dr. Brian Hayden. It is his view of what life and society were like 20,000 years ago in Southwestern France, where he studied (University of Bordeaux) and conducted research in some of the important painted caves from the Upper Paleolithic. He also used experiences from working with Australian Aborigines to document their use of stone tools, as well as working with more complex hunter-gatherers in the Interior of British Columbia. The book has been acclaimed by professional archaeologists, young readers, and others as a vivid, exciting, realistic account of these societies and a wonderful read.

Some people dismiss taverns as trivial. Others might argue that saloons are a bad influence. This book re-frames bars as valuable community spaces by exploring the role they’ve played in American history—from the Salem Witch Trials to Stonewall. Even though the United States has an ambivalent relationship with its bars and alcohol—a substance that has been and still can be a destructive force—taverns and saloons have also been key players in many social, cultural and political movements. And, since our local dives are an increasingly endangered species, now is a good moment to consider exactly what we are losing.   

Carl Jung, Darwin of the Mind is a review and an explanation of Jung's thought set in an evolutionary context. Jung explored the human psyche throughout his long life. His writings, of astonishing scope and depth, elaborate on imagery that can be found in rituals, myths, and fables worldwide as well as in the dreams, visions, and fantasies of his patients and himself. Jung pursued common threads of meaning to the point of becoming deeply versed in the esoterica of Eastern mysticism, Gnosticism, and alchemy. Taken collectively, Jung's works develop a coherent theory about how the psyche is constructed. The author demonstrates that Jung's concept of a collective unconscious structured by archetypes meshes well with accepted views of evolution and can be squared with the most rigorous science of today. 

It is a book that invites the reader to explore the breadth and diversity of human culture across the world. Conceived as a textbook, it is nevertheless written in a narrative style, and it's chock-full of stories and anecdotes from all over the world. I cover the breadth of social and cultural anthropology, from kinship in Melanesian villages to the digital revolution in African cities, from swidden agriculture to tourism. The book, originally from 1995, is due to be published in its fifth revised and expanded edition in 2023. This upcoming edition has been thoroughly revised and updated, and contains a couple of brand new chapters. As the world changes, so must we.

The epic story of the ways in which people have used laws to forge civilizations.

Rulers throughout history have made law. But laws were never simply instruments of power. They also offered diverse people a way to express their visions for a better world. I trace the rise and fall of the sophisticated legal systems that underpinned ancient empires and religious traditions. I describe tribal assemblies, farmers, and merchants who turned to law to define their communities, and I reveal the legal efforts that people repeatedly make to control their leaders. The rule of law has ancient origins, I conclude, but it Is not inevitable. Laws can only make the world better if we understand where they have come from and how they could have been different.

Should an infant be encouraged to sleep alone? Is breastfeeding better than bottle-feeding, or is that just a myth of the nineties? How much time should pass before a mother picks up her crying infant? And how important is it really to a baby's development to talk and sing to him or her?

In this ground-breaking book, anthropologist Meredith Small reveals her remarkable findings in the new science of ethnopediatrics. Professor Small joins pediatricians, child-development researchers, and anthropologists across the country who are studying to what extent the way we parent our infants is based on biological needs and to what extent it is based on culture - and how sometimes what is culturally dictated may not be what's best for babies.

Space Encyclopedia is an updated and expanded 2nd edition of my earlier book Planets, Stars & Galaxies presenting the most up-to-date discoveries of the universe including the first breathtaking image of a real black hole. This cosmic compendium contains everything space travelers might need to know about our solar system, a new menagerie of dwarf planets, the formation and ultimate fate of the universe, great-unsolved mysteries, the future of space travel, and the possibility of intelligent life beyond the Earth.

It has almost everything except the kitchen sink. This is your 21st Century passport to the stars. Check your spacesuit for leaks, your journey begins the moment you open it up.

The Wolf and The Willow is a novel of first contact between Native peoples and European explorers. Willow, a house slave of a Moroccan lord, is swept up in the 1528 expedition of conquistador Panfilo Narvaez to the New World. There, she meets Animi-Ma’lingan (He Who Outruns the Wolves), a young trader and storyteller who is on a mission to find a mysterious animal for the shamans of the Ojibwe people. Together, Willow and Wolf must outwit their captors on a journey up the Mississippi River through the heart of many thriving Indian civilizations.

The novel delves into the culture of the Ojibwe, Odawa, Mandan, Dakota Sioux, Caddo, and other tribes, culminating in a showdown at the great pyramid of Cahokia near present-day St. Louis.