Graeber and Wengrow's _The Dawn of Everything_ got lots of play in various high-falutin' review venues late last year, and being a sucker for big history I checked it out. I have to say it was pretty amazing, though I think they lay out far more threads than they can manage to weave together. The key takeways for me, off the top of my head, are the following: 1) agriculture is not an absorbing state, where once you discover it, you get stuck with it; 2) having agriculture does not condemn you to social inequality and a coercive state; 3) not unrelated, the deep historical record shows lots more variability, lots less linearity, and TONS more creative agency in shaping how we live than the conventional narrative allows for.

I found the "indigenous critique" fascinating and it really made me think. Schismogenesis seems likely and I accept what they have to say about it. The whole thread of how "caring work" translated into the bigger picture kind of lost me. I leave the book still somewhat uncertain as to how we landed on a world of social inequality and coercive states, given that none of it was inevitable. There are probably lots of other things I might want to say, but feel free to weigh in. If you liked Diamond's _Guns, Germs and Steel_, Harari's _Sapiens_, or Scott's work on "grain states", I do highly recommend this.