MixedThe GuardianHenrich was trained as an anthropologist but now describes himself as a \'cultural evolutionist\'. In the same way that Darwin’s theory explains how life follows pathways of adaptation via natural selection, cultural evolution proposes that human cultures develop and transmit deep understandings and values across generations. There are many pathways of cultural evolution, Henrich contends, and no single human culture. To better understand the world and Europe’s influence on it, we need to recognise that European culture is, in Henrich’s key acronym, \'weird\': western, educated, industrialised, rich, democratic ... A casual reader may wonder how a book about the efflorescence of European culture could say next to nothing about racism, imperialism and environmental catastrophe ... What about non-European people who have settled in weird societies? Across virtually every sphere of human knowledge over the centuries, immigrants have carried ideas and practices that have fertilised cross-cultural thinking. This process seems mostly invisible to Henrich.
Eric Foner
RaveThe London Review of BooksFoner’s account of Lincoln’s last two years in office reinforces the conventional view of the president’s political greatness: he focused heroically on securing emancipation and shrewdly postponed discussion of what political rights freed people would gain ... Most of Foner’s readers will dismiss the possibility that the Great Emancipator would ever have abandoned black Americans. But one theme that quietly emerges from the book is Lincoln’s sustained reluctance to mobilise the full power of the federal government against its most recalcitrant citizens.
