Read a galley version, so maybe some of what follows has been fixed or tweaked.

Although not as captivating as Jared Diamond’s Guns Germs and Steel (which the author cites as partial inspiration for his approach), Bertness achieves a fresh approach to analyzing human history in much the same way. Whereas Diamond deviated from the traditional approach of viewing history through a lense shaped by ‘great men’ and fate-determining battles to instead view it as fatalistic from the start, with geography and the eponymous elements doing far more to shape human history than any singular individuals or achievements, Bertness has attempted to insert his work as a sort of missing link between the genre of history itself and related fields like political science, sociology and natural history. Although a stretch to say (as the author does) that this attempts the same tack as the works of Darwin and Marx, Bertness does achieve a fresh approach that is at the very least interesting, though not exactly groundbreaking.

Bertness lists several overarching (and overambitious) themes that he believes crop up repeatedly in our ‘natural history’: 1. The oldest battle is between cooperation and competition. 2. Coevolution contextualizes life. 3. Self organization complements symbiogenesis and coevolution.

Bertness on several occasions falls into a stylistic trap of referring to civilization as ‘European.’ Besides such a viewpoint making this book seem immediately outdated, it creates multiple apparent nonsequiters in situations where the author has just been discussing innovations or occurrences that clearly weren’t achieved by Europeans.

The application of natural history concepts to human history and evolution isn’t groundbreaking - Bertness cites Edward O. Wilson as its originator back in the 1970’s.

The insights into mushrooms and psylo toxins on the development of shamanism and religion were interesting.

Writing and word choice are choppy at times - “Towns like Cape Cod, Nantucket and Long Island were all sites of whale and dolphin strandings” - two out of the three aren’t towns at all, and this could have been solved by substituting another word: community, location, place, area, locale.

Overall, seems like an interesting concept that is still a rough sketch that could use some follow up and shaping.

A Brief Natural History of Civilization by Mark Bertness is incredibly interesting and packed full of information about culture and identity throughout the globe in a brief, compact way.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an advanced readers copy in exchange for an honest review.

This book is interesting for a general reader looking for an intelligent summary of the recent thinking on evolution.

The topics covered are wide ranging, from the dawn of time when we were all microbes cavorting in a primeval sea to early man coming down from the trees, learning and building fires, farms, cities and empires while ignoring to cost to the environment from our increasingly unsustainable ways. It ranges from mythology and religion in the past to artificial intelligence in the future.

However, there are three main themes which emerge, the first of which, cooperation vs competition is a timely reminder that we as a species work best when we cooperate with each other rather than compete. The author illustrates this with many examples of this beneficial model in the plant and animal world. The second and third themes are co-evolution and self organization.

While interpolation of observations of plant and animal systems to our current society seemed a bit of a stretch, the section on viruses was spot on, especially in the current context of the Covid-19 virus, and that alone is worth the price of admission.

The author, like Jared Diamond, raises some interesting points that we must consider before the selfish demons of capitalism, tribalism, greed destroy our planet, the main lesson being that cooperation is the only way we as a species will have chance to survive.