Book Description

Written by a Stanford- and Harvard-trained historian, Humans: The Story of Our Past, The Challenge to Our Future reveals that historical change has been accelerating from one period of human existence to the next, suggesting that we must move beyond organizing at the nation-state level to adopt a global, species-wide perspective. Ted Farmer, who taught history at the University of Minnesota, organized the Center for Early Modern History and a Center for Global Studies, and initiated a comparative world history course sequence and an interdisciplinary global studies major, has spent decades studying how what we were has had a direct impact on who we are. Rejecting a Western or Eurocentric lens on history, in Humans, he identifies six distinct periods of human connection, from vast geographic, cultural, and racial separation to great social, economic, and cultural convergence. Uniquely, Humans shows how, at each stage in history, humans created new modes of understanding, such as mythology, theology, and science, that now coexist in our present and complicate our effort to make sense of reality. Accessible to the curious casual reader yet meaty enough for college-level history instructors, Humans will help readers make sense of our situation: that we are faced with a looming global disaster unless we act in concert.