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Garrett Raymond's Reviews > Work: A History of How we spend our Time
Work: A History of How we spend our Time
by
by
I almost gave it 2 stars, but at the end of the day, I feel like the bad, far outweighed the good.
The good:
1. Very readable. The author knows how to construct sentences and paragraphs to express ideas clearly and concisely. It’s also divided into small sub-chapters, which I really like. Reading this book was never a slog and I flew through it.
2. By not being afraid to dive into a variety of subject areas, the author did bring some new interesting tidbits of information to my attention.
The Bad:
1. I said the author knows how to construct sentences and paragraphs; unfortunately it’s clear they don’t know how to construct chapters or a book. Ideas are rarely, if ever, connected together in any sort of coherent way. I love short sub-chapters, but after reading for a while it was clear that the author used them as a crutch since he was incapable of connecting the topics covered in each sub-chapter together. He often presents anecdotes that appear to be leading towards a conclusion, before rapidly changing subject and never returning to the train of thought. Other times the information he provides begs an obvious question that he fails to ever answer or even ask.
2. This is an anthropologist who is utterly ignorant of fields other than his own, yet chooses to discuss them as if he is an expert. Like many anthropologists, he HATES economists. Rarely will 5 pages pass without a shot taken at economists or economics. My background is in Econ, so perhaps I’m overly sensitive, but I can appreciate some anthro on Econ criticism. In fact, I was recently laughing out loud at some of the jokes Joseph Heinrich made at the expense of economists in “The Secret of Our Success”. The difference is Heinrich is a well-rounded academic who specializes in anthropology, but has deep knowledge of other fields, while Suzman is a narrowly focused anthropologist with a major inferiority complex. He does not understand economics at all, yet discusses and criticizes it in every chapter. For example, he says Economists have no interest in explaining why diamonds are more valuable than water. That is an insane statement. He has no understanding of the field he clearly resents and misrepresents the field to suit his needs. He also discusses other fields that he is clearly ignorant of. One silly example of how little knowledge he has outside of anthropology is his hilariously bad geography. One section of the book is devoted to Japan, China, and Korea, which he repeatedly refers to as SOUTHeast Asian countries. None of those countries are in what is commonly called Southeast Asia, and two of three have no land in what any sane person could consider to be Southeast Asia while looking at a map. How this wasn’t caught by an editor, I don’t know.
3. Even when sticking to anthro the author fails to ask the important questions or back up his claims with sufficient evidence. I suspect he was avoiding any evidence that would undermine his worldview. For example he writes at length at how easy life was for hunter-gatherers and how prosperous they were, then blames the ailments of humanity on population growth caused by adopting agriculture (to paraphrase: war is caused by agricultural societies needing more land to support their growing populations). However, he never asks the obvious question, If hunter-gatherers were so prosperous, why wasn’t there population growing and causing similar problems since it is a fact that they need more land to support each individual than agricultural societies do? I can’t imagine this question didn’t occur to Suzman, so I’m left to assume that he had no sufficient answer and chose to ignore it rather than undermine his shaky thesis.
At the end of the day I learned nothing from this highly-readable book because, even in the very few instances the author did offer new and relevant information, I had such little confidence in his integrity and intelligence that I could not accept them at face value.
The good:
1. Very readable. The author knows how to construct sentences and paragraphs to express ideas clearly and concisely. It’s also divided into small sub-chapters, which I really like. Reading this book was never a slog and I flew through it.
2. By not being afraid to dive into a variety of subject areas, the author did bring some new interesting tidbits of information to my attention.
The Bad:
1. I said the author knows how to construct sentences and paragraphs; unfortunately it’s clear they don’t know how to construct chapters or a book. Ideas are rarely, if ever, connected together in any sort of coherent way. I love short sub-chapters, but after reading for a while it was clear that the author used them as a crutch since he was incapable of connecting the topics covered in each sub-chapter together. He often presents anecdotes that appear to be leading towards a conclusion, before rapidly changing subject and never returning to the train of thought. Other times the information he provides begs an obvious question that he fails to ever answer or even ask.
2. This is an anthropologist who is utterly ignorant of fields other than his own, yet chooses to discuss them as if he is an expert. Like many anthropologists, he HATES economists. Rarely will 5 pages pass without a shot taken at economists or economics. My background is in Econ, so perhaps I’m overly sensitive, but I can appreciate some anthro on Econ criticism. In fact, I was recently laughing out loud at some of the jokes Joseph Heinrich made at the expense of economists in “The Secret of Our Success”. The difference is Heinrich is a well-rounded academic who specializes in anthropology, but has deep knowledge of other fields, while Suzman is a narrowly focused anthropologist with a major inferiority complex. He does not understand economics at all, yet discusses and criticizes it in every chapter. For example, he says Economists have no interest in explaining why diamonds are more valuable than water. That is an insane statement. He has no understanding of the field he clearly resents and misrepresents the field to suit his needs. He also discusses other fields that he is clearly ignorant of. One silly example of how little knowledge he has outside of anthropology is his hilariously bad geography. One section of the book is devoted to Japan, China, and Korea, which he repeatedly refers to as SOUTHeast Asian countries. None of those countries are in what is commonly called Southeast Asia, and two of three have no land in what any sane person could consider to be Southeast Asia while looking at a map. How this wasn’t caught by an editor, I don’t know.
3. Even when sticking to anthro the author fails to ask the important questions or back up his claims with sufficient evidence. I suspect he was avoiding any evidence that would undermine his worldview. For example he writes at length at how easy life was for hunter-gatherers and how prosperous they were, then blames the ailments of humanity on population growth caused by adopting agriculture (to paraphrase: war is caused by agricultural societies needing more land to support their growing populations). However, he never asks the obvious question, If hunter-gatherers were so prosperous, why wasn’t there population growing and causing similar problems since it is a fact that they need more land to support each individual than agricultural societies do? I can’t imagine this question didn’t occur to Suzman, so I’m left to assume that he had no sufficient answer and chose to ignore it rather than undermine his shaky thesis.
At the end of the day I learned nothing from this highly-readable book because, even in the very few instances the author did offer new and relevant information, I had such little confidence in his integrity and intelligence that I could not accept them at face value.
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Reading Progress
Finished Reading
December 5, 2021
– Shelved
