World Prehistory: A Brief Introduction (8th Edition)

It saddens me to have to send this textbook back as trade-in so I can afford the textbooks for my next semester. The author explains in detail the origins, interactions and complexities of human prehistory without resorting to technical language. I've had my 14 year old cousin read this book and she not only understood it but loved it. 'I wish my school's books were this cool' she said. That alone speaks volumes for the book and the author.

The idea for a standardized "World Prehistory" course covering the time from the evolution & dispersal of Homo sapiens from Africa to recorded history (roughly the Bronze Age) is a great idea. It sets the stage for the more common World History courses that cover the time period from the first Bronze Age cities up to the Industrial Age. However, this particular textbook is only okay. It's nowhere near as interesting as Brian Fagan's more well-known books (e.g. Floods, Famines & Emperors; The Long Summer; The Great Warming) that dealt primarily with the effects of climate change on historical societies and were often as thought-provoking as Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel. Here's a couple points I was dissatisfied with: 1) The photos are all black & white and rather low quality. Another issue is that we get a lot of photos of ruins but only a few artist reconstructions of what these ancient towns & cities looked like when people actually inhabited them. This makes it difficult for the reader to imagine how sophisticated these societies were and how they managed space & resources. 2) The book is a bit to heavy on data (names, dates) and too light on theory. This leaves the reader with a general idea of what happened where, but not why or how. The discussions of the Neolithic & Urban revolutions seemed quite brief & simplistic. The Upper Paleolithic Revolution that gave rise to behaviorally modern humans wasn't even mentioned. 3) The Upper Paleolithic era when humans dispersed across the globe is presented as rather boring. Readers don't hear much about the strange world the Ice Age hunter-gatherers encountered, teeming with now-extinct megafauna like wooly mammoths and cave bears and with various now-sunken continents like Doggerland, Sundaland, Sahul and Beringia. 4) Fagan does an adequate job of covering the prehistory of the Near East, Africa, the Americas, Polynesia, India, East & Southeast Asia, but conspicuously leaves out Europe (other than Minoan & Mycenean Greece), Central Asia, Australia, and Arctic areas

We ordered this book for her course this spring. It arrived in excellent condition as described and was exactly what she needed. Absolutely no complaints about the product or the service.

Holds up my monitor to eye level perfectly. Also a good read.

This book is a much older addition then the one needed for my Anthropology, but I tell you what, it still works great for the class!

This book is poorly written, full of constantly shifting dates that contradict from one page to another, wild suppositions stated as fact, and baseless claims about the nature of the human past. There are sparse maps that poorly delineate important sites, and most important sites mentioned in the text are not depicted, at the expense of others randomly-selected artifacts. The author seems to enjoy repeating phrases so much that I will never be able to hear "increasing complexity" or "intermediaries between the living and the supernatural" again without wanting to burn all copies of this book. The glossaries of sites, cultural and technical terms did not include many important places and terminology discussed in the text, almost to the point of being worthless. Like so many textbooks, it is far overpriced, but this one takes the cake by being a flimsy paperback with black and white photos for the same price one would expect for a more robust and fleshed-out full-color hardback. This book had far too many easy-to-detect typos for the 8th edition. Even the professor of my class agreed this text was horrible. Shame on you, Brian Fagan!

Worked

not what it said it was, and not the eigth edition and hard cover like it said it was. it is eight the 2nd edition and not the 8th

Fine

It was a well used copy but had no underlining or comments on pages etc. so was fine for reading.