The Invention of Yesterday

A 50,000-Year History of Human Culture, Conflict, and Connection

De: Tamim Ansary

Narrado por: Tamim Ansary

From language to culture to cultural collision: the story of how humans invented history, from the Stone Age to the Virtual Age

Traveling across millennia, weaving the experiences and world views of cultures both extinct and extant, The Invention of Yesterday shows that the engine of history is not so much heroic (battles won), geographic (farmers thrive), or anthropogenic (humans change the planet) as it is narrative.

Many thousands of years ago, when we existed only as countless small autonomous bands of hunter-gatherers widely distributed through the wilderness, we began inventing stories - to organize for survival, to find purpose and meaning, to explain the unfathomable. Ultimately these became the basis for empires, civilizations, and cultures. And when various narratives began to collide and overlap, the encounters produced everything from confusion, chaos, and war to cultural efflorescence, religious awakenings, and intellectual breakthroughs.

Through vivid stories studded with insights, Tamim Ansary illuminates the world-historical consequences of the unique human capacity to invent and communicate abstract ideas. In doing so, he also explains our ever-more-intertwined present: the narratives now shaping us, the reasons we still battle one another, and the future we may yet create.

©2019 Tamim Ansary (P)2019 PublicAffairs

A New Perspective of World History

It is no secret that I love the work of Yuval Noah Harari. In this complex work, Tamim Ansary proves himself an equal. Whereas Harari’s seminal work, SAPIENS, focused on the ability of humans to utilize abstract concepts to create new communities, Ansary focuses on who these communities were (which he calls “constellations”) and the grand ideas that unified them. As such, the book starts as an anthropological work, examining human mental capacity and cultural development. But soon, it becomes a world history, but one focusing on ideas rather than events. Ansary shows how a common idea—whether that be religious, philosophical, or social—created a unified identity among certain people and led to political change. Such ideas include the deification of leaders in ancient Mesopotamia, Chinese Legalism, the rise of Christianity, the progress narrative of the enlightenment era, and Marxism. For each concept, he connects the development of the grand narrative to what he calls the “Ms”: Money, Math, Messaging, Management, and Might. These components are what sustain an empire, but cannot survive without a unifying narrative. The book ends by touching briefly on the machine age, the world wars, and post-nation state period into which we are emerging. The book is written with skill, and Ansary narrates the audiobook himself. That he sounds like my late grandfather’s lost twin is a sentimental bonus.

Loved it!

What can I say, I have been fascinated by Tamim Ansary's writings since reading and listening to his book Destiny Disrupted. I would read anything by him. Again style of writing so beautiful it feels like you are reading not a history book but a storybook. Narration is great too. Amazing all around.

Wonderful!

Tamim Ansary writes with deep insight, compassion, and wit. His understanding of the interconnected patterns of humanity is profound—even the topics about which I thought I knew something were given richer meaning by his unputdownable storytelling.

good stuff

Ansary is a good writer and narrator, I enjoyed this broad recap of the history of everything.
one of Ansary's best attributes is his ability to convey historical perspectives from a non eurocentric angle to English speakers.

Must read!

Is you loved sapients this is a must, the interconnection of history and geography is mind blowing

Important perspective to be aware of

The author offers a great insight inside into the history of history of architecture and human nature. It is an important perspective to be aware of and understand is it makes history and our past and culture More predictive and understood.

My favorite book of the year

I loved this book! So many awesome insights and stories, with masterful wit throughout. Great book!

Fascinating and very pithy - but not too heavy going

It’s not easy to write a world history, and make it so fact filled and compelling at the same time, and I dare say fun to read also. But the author was wildly successful in accomplishing all this, and I really enjoyed every moment of this book. I highly recommend it to anybody who is interested in history and wants learn.

Truly perfect

I will listen to this more than once. Such wonderfully researched and thoughtfully constructed analysis of where we came from.

Good Solid General History

And a lot of it. This book was also refreshing for me, allowing me to spend time with reality after having suffered through a few books that were steady streams of BS (motivational books making false claims). So my suggestion is, to fully appreciate this book, torture yourself with a motivational book or two first...