
Civilized to Death
The Price of Progress
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Narrated by:
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Christopher Ryan
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By:
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Christopher Ryan
About this listen
The New York Times best-selling coauthor of Sex at Dawn explores the ways in which “progress” has perverted the way we live — how we eat, learn, feel, mate, parent, communicate, work, and die — in this “engaging, extensively documented, well-organized, and thought-provoking” (Booklist) book.
Most of us have instinctive evidence the world is ending - balmy December days, face-to-face conversation replaced with heads-to-screens zomboidism, a world at constant war, a political system in disarray. We hear some myths and lies so frequently that they feel like truths: Civilization is humankind’s greatest accomplishment. Progress is undeniable. Count your blessings. You’re lucky to be alive here and now. Well, maybe we are, and maybe we aren’t. Civilized to Death counters the idea that progress is inherently good, arguing that the "progress" defining our age is analogous to an advancing disease.
Prehistoric life, of course, was not without serious dangers and disadvantages. Many babies died in infancy. A broken bone, infected wound, snakebite, or difficult pregnancy could be life-threatening. But ultimately, Christopher Ryan questions, were these pre-civilized dangers more murderous than modern scourges such as car accidents, cancers, cardiovascular disease, and a technologically prolonged dying process?
Civilized to Death “will make you see our so-called progress in a whole new light” (Book Riot) and adds to the timely conversation that “the way we have been living is no longer sustainable, at least as long as we want to the earth to outlive us” (Psychology Today). Ryan makes the claim that we should start looking backwards to find our way into a better future.
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Feel Sorry For Your Grandchildren
- By Allen Moody on 02-28-21
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Operation Pineapple Express
- By: Scott Mann
- Narrated by: Lt. Col. Scott Mann
- Length: 10 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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In April 2021, an urgent call was placed from a Special Forces operator serving overseas. The message was clear: Get Nezam out of Afghanistan now. Nezam was part of the Afghan National Army’s first group of American-trained commandos; he passed through Fort Bragg’s legendary Q course and served alongside the US Special Forces for over a decade. But Afghanistan’s government and army were on the edge of collapse, and Nezam was receiving threatening texts from the Taliban.
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amazing, uplifting, heart wrenching
- By Lisa L. Weinley on 09-13-22
By: Scott Mann
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Pax
- War and Peace in Rome's Golden Age
- By: Tom Holland
- Narrated by: Tom Holland
- Length: 14 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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The Pax Romana has long been shorthand for the empire’s golden age. Stretching from Caledonia to Arabia, Rome ruled over a quarter of the world’s population. It was the wealthiest and most formidable state in the history of humankind. Pax is a captivating narrative history of Rome at the height of its power. From the gilded capital to realms beyond the frontier, historian Tom Holland shows ancient Rome in all its glory
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Great book!
- By Mic on 09-27-23
By: Tom Holland
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Warrior's Creed
- A Life of Preparing for and Facing the Impossible
- By: Roger Sparks, with Don Rearden
- Narrated by: Roger Sparks
- Length: 8 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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This powerful and inspirational story is as much of a self-help book as it is an edge of your seat military memoir. Warrior's Creed reveals a motivating and mindful approach to overcoming the odds, facing the impossible, and finding mercy and grace in the aftermath.
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Must Read!
- By M Flatten on 03-09-21
By: Roger Sparks, and others
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The Craft
- How the Freemasons Made the Modern World
- By: John Dickie
- Narrated by: Simon Slater
- Length: 16 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Founded in London in 1717 as a way of binding men in fellowship, Freemasonry proved so addictive that within two decades it had spread across the globe. Masonic influence became pervasive. Under George Washington, the Craft became a creed for the new American nation. Masonic networks held the British empire together. Under Napoleon, the Craft became a tool of authoritarianism and then a cover for revolutionary conspiracy. Both the Mormon Church and the Sicilian mafia owe their origins to Freemasonry.
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The best book about Freemasonry out there.
- By Isaac Pea on 02-19-21
By: John Dickie
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The Witches Are Coming
- By: Lindy West
- Narrated by: Lindy West
- Length: 6 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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From the moment powerful men started falling to the #MeToo movement, the lamentations began: This is feminism gone too far, this is injustice, this is a witch hunt. In The Witches Are Coming, firebrand author of the New York Times best-selling memoir and now critically acclaimed Hulu TV series Shrill Lindy West turns that refrain on its head. You think this is a witch hunt? Fine. You've got one.
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Starts strong then wanders
- By Dawn on 01-09-20
By: Lindy West
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The Devil Finds Work
- An Essay
- By: James Baldwin
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 3 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Baldwin's personal reflections on movies gathered here in a book-length essay are also a probing appraisal of American racial politics. Offering an incisive look at racism in American movies and a vision of America's self-delusions and deceptions, Baldwin challenges the underlying assumptions in such films as In the Heat of the Night, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, and The Exorcist.
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A Critical Masterpiece.
- By Ramon McGee on 05-10-18
By: James Baldwin
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A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth
- 4.6 Billion Years in 12 Pithy Chapters
- By: Henry Gee
- Narrated by: Henry Gee
- Length: 7 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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In the beginning, Earth was an inhospitably alien place—in constant chemical flux, covered with churning seas, crafting its landscape through incessant volcanic eruptions. Amid all this tumult and disaster, life began. The earliest living things were no more than membranes stretched across microscopic gaps in rocks, where boiling hot jets of mineral-rich water gushed out from cracks in the ocean floor. In A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth, Henry Gee zips through the last 4.6 billion years with infectious enthusiasm and intellectual rigor.
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incredibly annoying
- By A reader on 12-22-21
By: Henry Gee
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One Garden Against the World
- In Search of Hope in a Changing Climate
- By: Kate Bradbury
- Narrated by: Kate Bradbury
- Length: 8 hrs
- Unabridged
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One Garden Against the World is a call to action for all of us – gardeners, communities and individuals – to do more for wildlife and more for the climate. Climate change and biodiversity loss go hand in hand, but if we work together, it’s never too late to make a difference.
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A beautifully written call to action
- By Susan on 03-02-25
By: Kate Bradbury
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Lost Christianities
- The Battles of Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew
- By: Bart D. Ehrman
- Narrated by: Matthew Kugler
- Length: 13 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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The early Christian Church was a chaos of contending beliefs. Some groups of Christians claimed that there was not one God but two or twelve or thirty. Some believed that the world had not been created by God but by a lesser, ignorant deity. Certain sects maintained that Jesus was human but not divine, while others said he was divine but not human.
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The Early Church(es)
- By Margaret on 01-06-14
By: Bart D. Ehrman
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We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families
- Stories from Rwanda
- By: Philip Gourevitch
- Narrated by: Philip Gourevitch
- Length: 10 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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An unforgettable firsthand account of a people's response to genocide and what it tells us about humanity. This remarkable audiobook chronicles what has happened in Rwanda and neighboring states since 1994, when the Rwandan government called on everyone in the Hutu majority to murder everyone in the Tutsi minority.
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Things you'd never imagine
- By LEE on 12-27-19
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The Disordered Cosmos
- A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred
- By: Chanda Prescod-Weinstein
- Narrated by: Joniece Abbott-Pratt
- Length: 10 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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One of the leading physicists of her generation, Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein is also one of fewer than one hundred Black American women to earn a PhD from a department of physics. Her vision of the cosmos is vibrant, buoyantly nontraditional, and grounded in Black and queer feminist lineages. Dr. Prescod-Weinstein urges us to recognize how science, like most fields, is rife with racism, misogyny, and other forms of oppression. She lays out a bold new approach to science and society, beginning with the belief that we all have a fundamental right to know and love the night sky.
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Stunning
- By Amazon Customer on 04-05-21
What listeners say about Civilized to Death
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- Andrew in Ohio
- 10-08-19
I couldn't stop listening.
Thanks to Chris Ryan for writing this.
You confirmed deep suspicions in my psyche that something was off about how I was raised, how life is planned, and how I relate to others. I don't need drugs or therapy to numb me out. I need the kind of therapy, relationships, and lifestyle that brings me closer to my natural state. As I've been doing this over the past couple years, my depression has waned, my anxiety has lessened, my discontent has subsided more and more. I am much happier eating an avocado than crembule. Happier with a beach bonfire than a loud club. More at peace with a hike than with the treadmill. We need the message in this book of simplicity, of acceptance of our nature, and the acknowledgement of our animal nature. These don't need to be damned, but understood and celebrated. Hopefully we all take the wisdom of taking a step back from all this "progress" to see what we have lost in the process.
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20 people found this helpful
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- Captain Jake
- 12-15-19
Please read this book!
Please listen to this book. It's important for more people to hear this. It will hopefully get you riled up enough about the traps of modern life to do something about it.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Scott
- 12-10-19
loved it until the second to last chapter
I loved the book, the assumptions it challenged, and the presentation. it really made me think about whether we are living in a false paradise and what might be better for us now and in the future.
I only gave a 4 because of the chapter on psychedelics. The chapter went from a worthy note about one way that hunter gatherers handled the divine and spirituality into a political rant about the injustice and politics of which drugs are legal or not. I don't see the relevance of the Vietnam war and the drug politics that surrounded it to the premise of mankind being better when closer to nature.
overall, I loved the book, but one chapter made me question the validity of the remainder.
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2 people found this helpful
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- A.C.
- 02-07-20
Mind blowing
So much of what I have felt or thought or knew but was un able to express is expressed in this book. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate the effort the author put into making this a veryMeasured and pleasant book.
It’s been said “ people know the truth when they hear it”
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1 person found this helpful
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- Jake
- 03-09-20
Excellent
A wonderfully refreshing breath among a field littered with dusty old tombs written by equally dusty and old sheep-men with cataract brains.
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- Amber B.
- 09-30-20
Amazing!
This book provides profound insight into the fine mess we are in as a society.
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- brbond
- 03-23-23
Much Needed Reality Check for Modernity
Steinbeck, in his much beloved travel narrative, 'Travels with Charley in Search of America', once reflected on the great satisfaction one might derive from sitting in a small town church on Sunday as the fire-&-brimstone rain bellows down from the burly, convicted voice of a country preacher. Such is this book for those of us standing quizzically aside & staring out brows-furrowed into a modern world of chronic disease, lauded selfishness, staggering levels of overproduction, environmental devastation, etc & wondering, 'who the hell's idea of progress is this, anyways?'
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- VG
- 11-08-19
Sobering view on progress
Sobering view on progress. Probably the best book I’ve ever read. Recommend it with no doubts.
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- AudioBookListener
- 10-04-19
An Important Book
Sex at Dawn brought be to the doorstep, and Civilized to death gave me a tour of the house and a view of the street I came down to get there. This is an important book! I think the the arguments made would have been stronger without an appeal to the "life worth living" narrative, which I perceive as a component and tool of the NPP to endorse progress and the treadmill of personal improvement. Thank you for pulling this stuff together, Chris!
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- Bianca
- 10-22-20
Life changing book
This book should be required reading for anyone concerned about where we are headed as a species. The insight that you can find sonething closer to happiness and a fulfilling life if we choose to replicate hunter gatherers' life principles was especially interesting and one I will take to heart.
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