What got my attention and led me to read this book was a citation that seemed to show that Oded Galor had discovered the writings of the forgotten German Communist Karl August Wittfogel. It turns out that I was misinformed.

The reference to Wittfogel — who really did have some fantastic insights into human history — is very brief. Instead Galor cites popular historians like Jared Diamond far more often. His book, like Diamond’s, ranges over tens of thousands of years of human history and manages to make several interesting points. But it’s repetitive, in many ways unoriginal, and sadly not very memorable. I wish I had liked it more.