MixedThe New RepublicThough combative, The Dawn of Everything is an upbeat book. Its debunking energies mainly go to refuting the conventional wisdom at its most discouraging ... For all its historical and theoretical brilliance, The Dawn of Everything does not wholly vindicate the anarchist philosophical framework in which the argument is set. Graeber and Wengrow do not exactly preach anarchism, but the moral of their long and immensely rich study is clear: Relations of authority are the most important and revealing things about any society, small or large, and no one should ever be subject to any authority she hasn’t chosen to be subject to ... Native American political thought is certainly impressive, and Graeber and Wengrow expound it superlatively well ... Graeber and Wengrow’s second foray into socialist-/social democrat–baiting is more surprising ... Equality, the cherished ideal of most leftists past and present, seems to them a theoretical and strategic dead end, a mere \'technocratic\' reform. They dismiss, even mock, equality as a goal ... Surely it is not necessary to choose between freedom and equality, much less to disparage those who make the opposite choice.
John Gray
MixedThe New RepublicSeven Types of Atheism does not offer a rigorous or exhaustive taxonomy of nonbelief. The seven sections mainly provide a convenient way of organizing Gray’s likes and (more often) dislikes ... the reader, especially if she has encountered similar arguments in Gray’s previous books, may find a question arising in her mind: So what? ... Gray is at his best in...sketches of writers he admires, as well as in the many similar sketches scattered through his previous books ... Gray asks us...\'Other animals do not need a purpose in life.… Can we not think of the aim of life as being simply to see?\' With considerable respect for Gray (and for Conrad, Santayana, et al.), I would answer no.
Yuval Noah Harari
MixedThe Baffler\"... Harari is whimsical, imaginative, edgy, much given to leaping, dizzying sentences ... Harari frequently admonishes readers that the political problem of the future will probably not be oppression or exploitation but rather irrelevance... It is one more example—along with his failure ever to recommend, or even describe, people acting together for political purposes—of how 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, for all Harari’s brilliance, remains within the moral limits of a TED talk: never describe the crimes of, or urge action against, the corporate, financial, and governmental powers-that-be, who are, after all, such very good friends of the good people who run the TED talks.\
