Big books, who wouldn’t want to be seen with them? Or talk about it? Books that present a surprising, original, compelling ‘new vision’ on world history from the year zero, or on post-industrial society, on capital, on prehistory or – of course – on humanity? They are piled high at every airport.
The complication is that such intellectual blockbusters, whether Capital is by Thomas Piketty (816 pages) or Rutger Bregmans Most people are good (528), are not only great in their ambition, but usually also in girth – so fat! No Big Idea comes into circulation for less than hundreds of pages.
That is of course part of the genre – a coffee table with a Micro Guide makes little impression on chatty guests – but its size can also hinder what a book is ultimately about: getting it read.
Publisher Atlas Contact responds to this nagging unease with a series of ultra-short summaries of Great Books. Useful remedy for those who have the masterpiece ready but first – or afterwards – want to quickly read on the toilet what it is actually about, or what can be said about it. This could also be done by making books less thick or by providing an extract with the Big Book, but you would still prefer to have to checkout twice: first with the Bible, then with the catechism.
After, among other things Little Piketty and The little Piketty2 is now at Atlas Contact Little Graeber and Wengrow published, again written by journalist Wouter van Bergen. A summary in – still – 95 pages of the worldwide bestseller The Dawn of Everything (The beginning of everything) by anthropologist-cum-anarchist David Graeber and archaeologist David Wengrow.
This clear summary is also useful for readers without a coffee table, because the two Davids walk with seven league boots – and not always in a straight line – straight through world history and, like true rebels, throw everything upside down. Both Hobbes (with his war of all against all) and Rousseau (paradise of noble savages) were wrong about pre-modern humanity. People worked together and, according to the Davids, experimented extensively with political power and social organization. According to them, a compelling evolution cannot be discovered; There is always an alternative.
The littleformula also has a disadvantage: the representation is good, but critical weighting is lacking, so that Graeber and Wengrow’s claims are given even more authority than they already had. So it’s good to keep thinking about that Little Graeber and Wengrow is intended as a summary, the kind of extract that would be useful in an exam. The reader must come up with criticism himself, concise summaries of reviews are not yet in circulation. Maybe an idea for an even smaller appendix?
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