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Ultrasociety: How 10,000 Years of War Made Humans the Greatest Cooperators on Earth by [Turchin, Peter]

Ultrasociety: How 10,000 Years of War Made Humans the Greatest Cooperators on Earth Kindle Edition

by Peter Turchin (Author)

36 customer reviews

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Follow Peter Turchin on an epic journey through time. From stone-age assassins to the orbiting cathedrals of the space age, from bloodthirsty god-kings to India’s first vegetarian emperor, discover the secret history of our species—and the evolutionary logic that governed it all.

Length: 274 pages	Word Wise: Enabled	Enhanced Typesetting: Enabled
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Product details

File Size: 1496 KB
Print Length: 274 pages
Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
Publisher: Beresta Books (November 17, 2015)
Publication Date: November 17, 2015
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services LLC
Language: English
ASIN: B0185P69LU
Text-to-Speech: Enabled

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Word Wise: Enabled
Lending: Not Enabled
Screen Reader: Supported

Enhanced Typesetting: Enabled

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #180,350 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #151 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > History > World > Civilization & Culture
- #180 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Business & Money > Economics > Economic Conditions
- #502 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > Specific Topics > Political Economy

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william harris

a bit prosaic and dumbed down despite a excellent premise and some fascinating arguments

March 18, 2017

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

For the general reader, a bit prosaic and dumbed down despite a excellent premise and some fascinating arguments. The author avoids academic arguments that engage philosophers and specialists to speak to a broader audience about human violence subsumed as warfare, organized group violence. he posits the paradox that in both complex striated and smaller egalitarian communities this violence serves a useful social function.

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a reader from 50,000 feet

a theory of the evolution of cooperation

September 15, 2017

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A fascinating exposition of the apparently controversial multi-level selection hypothesis in cultural evolution.

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Harald Striepe

Ground breaking book by one of the researchers developing the ...

August 12, 2016

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

Ground breaking book by one of the researchers developing the field of Cliodynamics - models of history driven by data.

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Stephen F. Roth

Great Historical Writing, and Great Thinking to Explain It

November 29, 2015

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

The theory of history presented here is incredibly compelling: that natural selection from violent conflict between groups caused cooperative groups -- who suppressed in-group competition and free-riders -- to succeed, while less-cooperative groups went extinct. Like the theory of natural selection itself, it has an inexorable, inescapable persuasiveness to it: "How could it *not* be true?" I'll be hard-pressed to read any history in the future without this thinking constantly lurking in the back of my brain.

What's even more satisfying about this book is its elaboration of that theory -- 1. its explanation of how cycles of (different types of) violence waxed and waned in that evolutionary game, and 2. its detailed, excruciating supporting historical evidence -- both anecdotal and statistical.

Anyone who enjoys reading good history should thoroughly enjoy this book for its historical accounts alone. The coherent vision of global, multi-millennial movements of evolutionary cause and effect that informs those accounts makes it exceptional -- a real delight to read.

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Amazon Customer

Five Stars

June 2, 2017

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

great

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Rae Ann Eckstrom

Cultural Evolution

November 28, 2016

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

History in perspective thru the lens of Cultural Evolution. How we went from hunter gatherers to large states and the forces that propelled us. A lot to think about!

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Chip Hauss

A Must Read for Peacebuilders

March 2, 2016

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

This is a challenging and thought provoking book that is also way outside of my field--peacebuilding. Indeed, at first glance, it might seem as if Turchin's concerns are the exact opposite of mine.

Quite the opposite.

If you are interested in how humanity has evolved to a point at which we both have large and reasonably successful, legitimate states based on cooperation but still have seemingly intractable social, political, and economic problems, this is a book to read and think about.

That starts with his neatly chosen term, Destructive Creation. Those of us who are steeped in the work of development economists and the corporate startup world have no trouble seeing the irony of his flipping the order of those two words from the way Schumpeter and others have used them.

Therein, too, likes the book's most important--and most controversial--insight. The history of warfare has been an (he would make the case for the) cause of social evolution, in particular our ability to forge cooperative problem solving tools.

There are other reasons to read the book, including his focus on cultural evolution, complexity, and the use of new scientific models in the study of history (and, I would add, all the social sciences).

I'm not qualified to say whether Turchin is closer to getting it right than Steven Pinker or Ian Morris, both of whose works he takes on.

Rather, I think all of this new generation of evolutionary social scientists are getting us to think about questions of war and peace in a different historical perspective which lets activists like me sharpen our own arguments about the current period.

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Curtis Ackeret

Five Stars

September 28, 2016

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

VERY GOOD

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Most recent customer reviews

Nick Green

I am generally a big fan of Turchin and this ...

I am generally a big fan of Turchin and this book was his most accessible yet. However, his ideas in this book involved more hand waving and fell short of his usual persuasive...Read more

Published 1 month ago

Samuel Thomsen

Good introduction to cultural evolution, but overstates its case

For a brief pop science book, Ultrasociety goes very deep, and it’s rich in historical and theoretical insight.Read more

Published 2 months ago

pizzalizard

Science Finally Looks at History

This is an excellent and very readable book. It's nice to see the return of external conflict theory and the hypothesis that warfare is a key if not the prime mover of cultural...Read more

Published 3 months ago

kent dahlgren

Our hive achieves regular moments of transcendent creativity. Why?

I've managed high-performing teams my entire career, for some of the industry's most well-respected engineering teams.Read more

Published 7 months ago

The Hard but Hopeful Facts of Multilevel Cultural Evolution

Published 1 year ago

Roger Sweeny

5 Stars But Not Perfect

This is a relatively short and well-written book. I liked it and I liked Turchin’s attitude: This is my theory of how things happened.Read more

Published 1 year ago

chris goble

Excellent & Intriguing. Cultural evolution is here to stay.

This is an excellent, very accessible book well suited for general audiences not intimately familiar with cultural evolution or multi-level selection theory.Read more

Published 1 year ago

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