This book talks about early civilizations, and how the advent of weapons changed societies form hunter gatherers to those bent on conquest and imperialization. It spoke about how those societies that moved away from that lifestyle developed governments, organized religions, and literacy. I found the discourse on upgraded farming and irrigation techniques useful for one paper that I had to write. I did also use this book as a reference for talking about the genocide of Native Americans and the weaponized use of smallpox. It did have some other interesting points, but I was still fairly unimpressed on the whole.

This book was recommended to me as a supplement to my Cultural Anthropology classes. I got this one, as well as Collapse. To be completely honest, I have no real idea why this author gets such great reviews. I usually always try to find something positive to say about every book that I read, even if I do not like them. I realize that some books aren't for everyone, and the people that wrote them did put in a lot of time and work and do not deserve to just be dragged. I have to say that I was personally bored to death reading this, and it did not supplement my courses in a way that was beneficial. To be fair, it did have some interesting parts in it, but looking at as a whole, it was not for me.