Understanding Human History [Paperback]

Michael H. Hart (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 15, 2007

Understanding Human History is a history of humanity, beginning about 100,000 years ago and going through the 20th century. It includes discussions of developments in every major area of the world. Unlike other books on world history, it explicitly discusses racial differences in intelligence, and explains how, why, and when they arose. The book also discusses the many consequences that those differences have had on human events, starting in prehistoric times and continuing to the present. The book includes an abundance of data and tables, together with sixteen maps, three tables, an extensive bibliography, and a thorough index.

Editorial Reviews

Review

VDARE.COM - http://vdare.com/sailer/070812_hart.htm August 12, 2007 A Real Diamond: Michael Hart's Understanding Human History By Steve Sailer The ambitious History of Everything book has been an important genre at least since Sir Walter Raleigh's The Historie of the World. The most popular example of recent years: Jared Diamond's 1997 bestseller Guns, Germs, and Steel. Diamond attempted to explain the always-interesting question of who conquered whom over the last 13,000 years without mentioning differences in average intelligence among human groups-a factor that he ruled out, a priori, as too "racist" and "loathsome" even to think about. Now, there's another entry in this genre: Michael H. Hart's Understanding Human History: An analysis including the effects of geography and differential evolution (Washington Summit Publishers, pp. 484, $24.95). Hart's book serves as a comprehensive refutation of Guns, Germs, and Steel. It's an impressive and insightful attempt to provide a more careful and powerful answer to Diamond's question about why some peoples came to rule other peoples. Unlike Diamond, Hart is also interested in a second, less bloodthirsty question: who gave what to the entire human race in terms of science, technology, and the arts. This is a fascinating topic-but one that the Diamonds of the world shy away from, since measuring contributions rather than conquests don't present an opportunity for the competitive moralism, the public white-guilt breast-beating afforded by the European expansion of 1400-1900. Over the same period, as everyone knows deep down, virtually every advance that is now the shared patrimony of humanity was made by Europeans or their offshoots. These days, that's a rather inconvenient truth. Hart sums up: "The central hypothesis of this book is that genetic differences between human groups (in particular, differences in average native intelligence) have been an important factor in human history." Hart is a polymath: a rocket scientist with a Ph.D. in astronomy who worked at NASA and was a physics professor at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. Along the way, he picked up a law degree. Every decade or two, Hart publishes a book for a general audience. His best-known: 1978's The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History. (Hart's top six, by the way, were Muhammad, Newton, Jesus, Buddha, Confucius, and St. Paul. I'm sure your ranking would differ, but that was the fun of Hart's book: it was a great argument-starter. His complete list is here.) Now, in Understanding Human History, Hart changes his focus from individuals to racial groups. He begins with a quick (130 pages) but close to state-of-the-art overview of the human sciences relevant to history-physical anthropology, linguistics, population genetics and psychometrics. This section alone would be worth the price of the book. Hart has mastered the scientific literature through at least 2005. For instance, Hart, who is Jewish, devotes three pages to the fascinating theory published two years ago by genetic anthropologist Henry Harpending and physicist turned evolutionary theorist Gregory Cochran that European Jews evolved their higher IQs just over the last millennium. After reviewing the human sciences, Hart moves on to perhaps the most concise history of the world from the Stone Age to the late 20th Century imaginable. Many of the famous "big histories," such as Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Thomas Babington Macaulay's History of England, Kenneth Clark's Civilization, and Jacques Barzun's From Dawn to Decadence are suffused with their authors' personalities. But Hart almost never stops for a self-indulgent aside, which allows him to race through in fewer than 500 pa --http://vdare.com/sailer/070812_hart.htm

About the Author

Michael H. Hart is both a trained scientist and a successful history writer. He did his undergraduate work at Cornell University, where he majored in mathematics, and later obtained a Ph.D. in astronomy from Princeton University. He also has master s degrees in two other fields (physics and computer science). His published work in scientific journals includes several detailed computer simulations of atmospheric evolution. His best known history book is The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History, which has been translated into over a dozen foreign languages and has sold several hundred thousand copies. That book has been widely praised for its scope, its lucidity, and its factual accuracy.

Product Details

• Paperback: 496 pages
• Publisher: Washington Summit Publishers; 1st edition (July 15, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1593680260
• ISBN-13: 978-1593680268
• Product Dimensions: 9.7 x 7 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #150,500 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

61 of 66 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars For Those Who Must Know WHY, August 9, 2007

By 

Mike Berman (New York City) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Understanding Human History (Paperback)

Here is a remarkable achievement. History books which answer the questions as to "when" and "where" are a dime a dozen. Some wars and some inventions, I guess you know them well. What Michael Hart has done in this masterpiece of a grand history lesson is to explain to his readers the great "whys" of history and pre-history.

Why did men start speaking with each other at a certain time and place? And why is it that agriculture first appeared where and when it did? Similarly, why did men develop the ability to write in the period and area they did? Dr. Hart's transgressive answers to these questions will not please the faint of heart and the politically correct. Not only are the plants, animals and climate of each population's habitat examined, but their cognitive abilities are taken into full account as well.

Understanding Human History is for readers who must know the truth, no matter where it will lead them. If a superior IQ was as powerful a prerequisite for the development of the Industrial Revolution as any other factor, then so be it. Few men would be up to the monumental task of making the case presented in these pages because it requires such a vast knowledge of history and science as well as the courage to break the most oppressive taboo of our time. In a sane world, this would be a required text for college students of world history.

60 of 67 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb Systematizing, August 3, 2007

By 

J. P. Rushton "Prof" (University of Western Ontario) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Understanding Human History (Paperback)

Michael Hart has written a powerful new book which provides an erudite biological explanation of human history. His data-filled book pulls together diverse events using a gene-based evolutionary theory that takes IQ differences into account. He frames his ideas boldly and provocatively and he explains why cold-selected northern peoples made most of the major advances in civilization. Hart's writing is beautifully concise and to the point, and he makes excellent use of tables and bulleted lists.

Hart also explains why invasions are much more frequent southwards than northwards He describes how the northern Mongols invaded China (twice) and how the Austronesian expansion out of China some 5,000 years ago led to the modern populations of the Philippines and Polynesia. He also describes the Indo-European invasion of the Indian sub-continent about 1500 BC and the beginning of the caste system there, as well as the Indo-European invasion of Greece and Italy and their founding of magnificent civilizations. Of interest, too, is the backwardness of the Arab world, relative to Europe, and the sparseness of its achievements, in part due to the low average Arab IQ of 88 compared to the average European IQ of 100. By contrast, Arabs were easily able to colonize and enlighten the East Coast of Africa with its average IQ of 70. IQ and Global Inequality

There are occasional quirks such as the use of statistical symbols to characterize population groups of varying IQs, and no mention is made of the failure of the upper classes to have children helping cause the fall of Rome. But Hart's scholarship is engaging and he defines a new direction forward that future scholars can follow to embellish. History may yet become a theoretically structured discipline.

29 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Free Thinker, September 24, 2007

By 

Norman Barry "Norm" (Connecticut) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Understanding Human History (Paperback)

I have met Dr. Hart and know him to be a free thinker and an excellent scholar. He will of course be pilloried for mentioning the unmentionable -- racial differences -- but so what. In "Understanding Human History," Dr. Hart makes a strong case that differences in IQ are responsible for the different levels of development we see in the world. But the book is more than that. It gives a concise though accurate summary of human history.

I read this book as sort of an antidote to Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel," which used pretzel logic to determine that race has nothing to do with intellect or civilizational achievement.

Buy the book. Even if you disagree with some parts, it will force you to think about subjects not often publicly discussed in the academy or the media.