Books › The world until yesterday › Books like it
If you loved
Books like The world until yesterday
A sweeping, reflective journey that holds up a mirror to modern life by examining the traditional societies we left behind. These 12 books are the closest matches in mood, pace and themes, with what each one shares with The world until yesterday.
- contemplative
- expansive
- grounded
- 01
Guns, germs, and steel
Jared M. Diamond · 1998
A sweeping, structural lens that reframes the entire history of human civilization through the unforgiving realities of geography and environment.
- 02
Collapse
Jared M. Diamond · 2004
A sweeping, sobering autopsy of fallen civilizations that holds a mirror up to our own precarious future.
- 03
Upheaval
Jared Diamond
A sobering, wide-lens examination of how nations navigate the brink of disaster, viewed through the psychological lens of personal trauma.
- 04
The Dawn of Everything
David Graeber and David Wengrow
A sweeping, paradigm-shattering intellectual adventure that rewrites the story of human potential.
- 05
The secret of our success
Joseph Patrick Henrich
A paradigm-shifting exploration that dismantles the myth of the lone genius to reveal the true superpower of our species: our collective brain.
- 06
Before the dawn
Nicholas Wade · 2006
An expansive, science-driven journey into the deep past that decodes the genetic breadcrumbs of our earliest ancestors.
- 07
Sapiens
Yuval Noah Harari
A sweeping, paradigm-shifting journey that reveals the everyday structures of human life as nothing more than powerful, shared fictions.
- 08
Exercised
Daniel Lieberman
A liberating, science-backed exploration that replaces gym guilt with a fascinating evolutionary understanding of how our bodies are meant to move.
- 09
Against the Grain
James C. Scott
A paradigm-shifting journey into deep history that completely upends the comforting myth of human progress.
- 10
Catching fire
Richard Wrangham · 2009
A paradigm-shifting exploration of how the simple act of cooking transformed our ancestors into modern humans.
- 11
Who we are and how we got here
David Reich (Of Harvard Medical School)
A sweeping, science-driven journey through deep time that rewrites the story of human ancestry and interconnectedness.
- 12
A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived
Adam Rutherford
A witty, mind-expanding journey through our DNA that proves human history is far messier and more interconnected than we ever imagined.
