The World Until Yesterday

What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies?

Jared Diamond examines what modern societies can learn from traditional communities, drawing especially on his long fieldwork in New Guinea and examples from other small-scale societies. The book compares approaches to conflict resolution, child-rearing, care for older people, health, language, and risk. Diamond argues that these societies preserve ways of life that characterized most of human history and may offer useful lessons for contemporary challenges.

by Jared Diamond

Penguin Group US · First published 2012 · 512 pages