Customer Reviews

Against Civilization: Readings and Reflections

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This I a beautiful collection of work from the most important thinkers of our time. John Zerzan put this amaizing book together for people who know the horrors of civilization. I would reccomend this book to anybody and everybody living in our destructive modern culture. This book brings up points of an all around great perspective of civilization, with words from my personal favorite authors. Another plus is it is short but still a very percise and accurate read. You could finish it in a day or weekend. Over all beautiful piece of work.

Against Civilization by John Zerzan is a great compilation of writings from the hands of many different authors.

The essays/excerpts cover a variety of subjects, including: topsoil depletion, deforestation, the loss of bio-diversity, pollution, and the human influence on the natural world. Many of the essays also discuss the harms of modern life, the emptiness of civilized living, and the pervasive unhappiness that pervades so many human lives.

My favorite writings were:

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origins of Inequality
Fredy Perlman, Against His-story, Against Leviathan!
Marvin Harris, Our Kind
Chellis Glendinning, My Name is Chellis and I'm Recovering from Western Civilization
Ivan Illich, Toward a History of Needs
Tamarack Song, The Old Way and Civilization
William Koetke, The Final Empire: The Collapse of Civilization and The Seed of the Future
Theodore Roszak, Where the Wasteland Ends: Politics and Transcendence in Postindustrial Society
Feral Faun, Feral Revolution
Kirkpatrick Sale, Rebels Against the Future: Lessons from the Luddites

All in all, this book is a great read for those willing to take an honest, hard look at what we call civilization.

Well written and informed, a must read. I read books of this nature all the time and my mind has not been stretched this far in a decade.

Will keep this short because I hate the "review novelists!!" (who reads it all anyway?.....) My first introduction to Zerzan and look forward to more to come. A collection of essays.....related by characteristic....and what is so eye-opening are the essays from the late 1700's and mid 1800s that identify "civilization" (you'll gain a new perspective of that word) as having the same ills and frustrations as we lament now. In short, "we're" not sustainable.

An exciting consideration of the things we all most need to know. The illustrations are also outstanding.