In October 2021, anthropologist David Graeber and archaeologist David Wengrow published “The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity,” arguably one of the most consequential pieces of anthropological scholarship of recent years. The book quickly shot to the top of best-seller lists and generated a wide-ranging discussion in newspapers, magazines, and journals that do not typically pay attention to recent publications in the field of anthropology. Graeber and Wengrow were able to attract such a broad audience due to the book’s central argument, which uses anthropological, archaeological, and historical evidence to critique current popular views on the so-called “progress of western civilization” and the Hobbesian and Rousseauian theories of the origin of the social contract, as well as to propose a new genealogy for Enlightenment thinking on the origins of inequality.

In this course, we read The Dawn of Everything as our central text, alongside the sources it draws upon and the responses to the book. See our Miro Board for the results of our experiment in diagramming the book’s content and its reception across a range of media. This is a work in progress and will be updated in future semesters.

See below for the current work-in-progress list of reviews and commentary on the book.

Reviews & Responses

Academic (Archaeology)

Birch, Jennifer. 2022. The Dawn of Everything. American Antiquity 87(4), 2022, pp. 816–817.
Çilingiroğlu, Çiler. 2022. A Daring Quest for the Kairos: Reflections on Graeber and Wengrow’s The Dawn of Everything. Current Anthropology 63(5): 612-614.
Fagan, Brian & Nadia Durrani (2021) The dawn of everything: A new history?, Reviews in Anthropology, 50:3-4, 80-99, https://doi.org/10.1080/00938157.2022.2026612
Flexner, James L. 2022. The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity. Australian Archaeology. https://doi.org/10.1080/03122417.2022.2133280
Joyce, Rosemary. 2022. The Dawn of Everything. American Anthropologist. DOI: 10.1111/aman.13770
Kiddey, Rachael. 2022. Antiquity Book Reviews. Antiquity Vol. 96 (386): 500–502 https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2022.7
Morris, Ian. 2022. Against Method. American Journal of Archaeology 126(3): 65-75.
Siegel. 2022. A Different Kind of Big History. Journal of Near Eastern Studies. 429-432.

Cliodynamics Special Issue
Feinman, Gary. 2022. Reframing Historical Rhymes from the Dawn of Everything.
Hoyer, Daniel. 2022. Introduction to Special Issue: Leading Scholars of the Past Comment on Dawn of Everything.
Morris, Ian. 2022. Stop making sense.
Scheidel, Walter. 2022. Resetting History’s Dial? A Critique of David Graeber and David Wengrow, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity.
Smith, Michael E. 2022. Early Cities in The Dawn of Everything: Shoddy Scholarship in Support of Pedestrian Conclusions.
Wiessner, Polly. 2022. Hunter-gatherers: Perspectives from the starting point.

Academic (Anthropology, History, Economics, Political Science)

Appadurai, Arjun. 2022. The dawn of everything? Anthropology Today 38(1): 1-2.
Bolman, Brad & Hannah Moots.2022. After Dawn: Resurgent Archaeology and the Dawn of Everything https://www.chicagoreview.org/david-graeber-the-dawn-of-everything/
Edwards. 2022. Upending Civilization. Skeptic 27(1): 71-77.
Harding, Lauren. 2022. The Dawn of Everything. Human Ecology 50: 393-395. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-022-00318-4
Manning, Patrick. 2022. The Dawn of Everything: Anthropology and History. World History Connected 19(3).
Rush, Fred. 2022. The Dawn of Everything. The Review of Politics 84: 630-658. https://doi.org/10.1017/S003467052200064X
Tonkinwise, Cameron. (2022) Before Design, More-than-Design: Elucidating “Ontological Design”, Design and Culture, 14:3, 341-359. https://doi.org/10.1080/17547075.2022.2105529

Magazines and Newspapers

Appiah-Wengrow Debate
Appiah, Kwame Anthony. Digging for Utopia. NYRB
Wengrow, David. The Roots of Inequality. NYRB

Alexander, Dominic. The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity - book review. Counterfire. 2022, Feb. 10.
Deresiewicz, William. Human History Gets a Rewrite. The Atlantic. 2021, Oct. 18.
Gray, John. How fear makes us human. The New Statesman. 2021, Nov. 3.
Gopal, Anand. The Archaeology of Hope. Dissent. 2022, Spring.
Guha, Sumit. A False Dawn? A Review of the Dawn of Everything. Not Even Past. 2022, Mar 4.
Handler, Richard. Prehistory without hierarchy. Times Literary Supplement. 2022, Jan. 7.
Hedgehog. ‘Wrong About (Almost) Everything’ – a review of ‘The Dawn of Everything’ by David Graeber & David Wengrow. Libcom
Henderson, Robert. Choosing Civilization. City Journal. 2021, Nov. 19.
Immerwahr, Daniel. Beyond the State: David Graeber and David Wengrow’s anarchist history of humanity. The Nation. 2021, Sep. 20.
Junk, Dennis J. ‘The Dawn of Everything’ and the Politics of Human Prehistory. Quillette. 2022, Oct. 22.
Kern, Emily. The Radical Promise of Human History. The Boston Review. 2021, Nov. 3.
Knight, Christopher. Did communism make us human? On the anthropology of David Graeber. The Brooklyn Rail. 2021, Jun.
Knight, Christopher. In Fundamental Ways Incoherent and Wrong. Monthly Review. 2021, Dec. 17-20.
Lewis-Kraus, Gideon. Early Civilizations had it all figured out. The New Yorker. 2021, Nov. 1.
Lindisfarne, Nancy & Jonathan Neale. All things being equal. Monthly Review. 2021, Dec. 17-20.
Nakamura, Carolyn. Untenable History. Offshoot. 2022, Mar. 13.
Porges, Matthew. A Political Garden of Eden. Los Angeles Review of Books. 2022, Jan. 19.
Suemnicht, Kevin. The Black Radical Tradition in *The Dawn of Everything*. Black Perspectives. 2022, Jan. 21.
Villarreal, Nicolas D. The Dawn of Social Evolution. Cosmonaut Mag. 2022, Mar. 6.
Walters, Jonah. Chastening the Past. Strange Matters

Blogs, Podcasts and Vlogs

British Library Forum feat. David Wengrow, Emma Dabiri, Ahdaf Soueif, & Ayça Çubukçu
Hoel, Erik. The Gossip Trap.
Lauterwasser, David B. A Primitivist Critique of ‘The Dawn of Everything’ — Book Review.
Looi, Mark. On “The Dawn of Everything.” 2022, Apr.16. https://marklooi.medium.com/on-the-dawn-of-everything-734beb2ca4a5
Political Anthropology
10.1 Do "Egalitarian Societies" Exist? David Graeber & David Wengrow’s "The Dawn of Everything"
10.2 The Dawn of Everything: How Graeber & Wengrow’s book sets us up to fail at politics
10.3 The Ingredients of Hierarchy: Graeber & Wengrow's Dawn of Everything, Chapter 3
10.4 What Causes Seasonal Political Structures? Graeber & Wengrow's The Dawn of Everything Ch. 3
Schliesser, Eric. Freedom in The Dawn of Everything, Pt 1. 2022, Jan. 31.
Schliesser, Eric. Freedom in The Dawn of Everything, Pt 2. 2022, Feb 2.
Smith, Christopher. On First Looking into The Dawn of Everything. 2021, Oct. 25.
The Dig with Daniel Denvir. Astra Taylor Interviews David Wengrow. 2021, Nov. 10.

Auxiliary Texts

Bessire, Lucas. 2014. Behold the Black Caiman: A Chronicle of Ayoreo Life. University of Chicago Press. [Selections from Introduction and Chapter 1]
Dan-Cohen, Talia. 2020. Tracing Complexity: The Case of Archaeology. American Anthropologist 122(4): 733-744. https://doi.org/10.1111/aman.13479.
Walthall, John A. 1991 “French Colonial Archaeology The Illinois Country and the Western Great Lakes” pp 4-11.
Wobst, H. Martin. 1978. The Archaeo-Ethnology of Hunter-Gatherers or the Tyranny of the Ethnographic Record in Archaeology. American Antiquity 43(2): 303-309.

The Original Affluent Society
Keane, Webb. 2022. Marshall Sahlin’s “Original Affluent Society” 50 Years Later. Public Books.
Sahlins, Marshall. 1968. The Original Affluent Society. From Stone Age Economics.