Civilizations: Culture, Ambition, and the Transformation of Nature

Erudite, wide-ranging, a work of dazzling scholarship written with extraordinary flair, Civilizations redefines the subject that has fascinated historians from Thucydides to Gibbon to Spengler to Fernand Braudel: the nature of civilization. To the author, Oxford historian Felipe Fernández-Armesto, a society's relationship to climate, geography, and ecology are paramount in determining its degree of success. "Unlike previous attempts to write the comparative history of civilizations," he writes, "it is arranged environment by environment, rather than period by period or society by society." Thus, for example, tundra civilizations of Ice Age Europe are linked with those of the Inuit of the Pacific Northwest, the Mississippi Mound Builders with the deforesters of eleventh-century Europe. Civilizations brilliantly connects the world of ecologist, geologist, and geographer with the panorama of cultural history.… (more)

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LibraryThing member jwhenderson

The subtitle for Felipe Fernandez-Armesto's amazing book references culture, ambition and nature. These ideas are all central to his history of civilizations, but as he states near the end of the book it is a "book of places". That is an overriding theme that is underscored by the many diverse

civilizations that he discusses. Thus the book is a history of civilizations, not one civilization; and it is also about the power and ambition of mankind that he uses to tame geography, ecology, climate and other animals to form cities. Although, the author argues in his introduction that cities are not a necessary condition of civilization no matter how frequently they have been associated with the rise of civilization in history. Like all history the book presents an empirical argument with examples of civilizations from grasslands and forests, arid and rain-filled climates, highlands and ocean-based areas. It is a tribute to the intelligence and adaptability of man that civilizations can be found in places as disparate as the Andes and the Aegean; the Euphrates and post-glacial European forests; the Indus, Yellow, and Yangtze rivers of Asia; and other places. The result of Civilizations wide-ranging, through time and geography, ruminations and revelations is a book that is informative and thoughtful. Undoubtedly controversial at times, it is an exciting read for anyone interested in the ability of man to create and mold the world into civilizations.

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LibraryThing member JusNeuce

Not a bad book--and a handsome cover for a trade paperback--but the contents don't match the hype/marketing for this book. Printed on super cheap paper, too.

LibraryThing member mike.vaneerden

This book studies the largish topic of civilizations by the way in which environmental conditions shape its processes. Since in large part civilization is basically a reshaping of nature "in our own image," as the author says, this approach is able to draw interesting comparisons and contrasts

between cultures in different times and places which more chronologically or ideologically focused studies are unable to do. Fun to peruse.

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LibraryThing member thcson

A decent read, but it seemed quite bland to me. The author has clearly aimed this book for a broad public by refraining from using academic words and avoiding analysis and critical thought. It's fairly entertaining but the author certainly doesn't make any original points.

LibraryThing member mbmackay

A potpourri of insights into what makes a Civilisation, but lacks a unifying theme.
Read Mar 2004

LibraryThing member pierthinker

This book attempts to define civilisation as the ability for a group of peoples to live within, harness and ultimately transcend the geographic environment in which they find themselves, rather than as the result of any intellectual, spiritual or socio-economic drivers. In support of this argument

we are given a whistle-stop tour of pretty much every civilisation across the world and back into time for which historical evidence of some kind exists.

The book examines civilisations in a loosely chronological way grouped by their geographic environments: tundra, desert, prairie, savannah, steppe, tropical lowlands, alluvial soils, highlands, seaboard, maritime and finally oceanic. The examples are so many that even in a book of over 500 pages each one is afforded only a handful of pages at most. Eventually this overwhelms the reader (well, this reader) and all these different groups of people start to merge together or overlap in the mind.

Clearly, Fernandez-Armesto is an extraordinarily erudite historian and writer and has produced a book with levels of depth and scope not matched since Toynbee.

For the lay reader this book would benefit enormously from the inclusion of maps.

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