What Makes Civilization?: The Ancient Near East and the Future of the West

This is quite an interesting but very hybrid book. Wengrow seems to be trying to refute Samuel Huntington's thesis on the clash of civilizations. The author is particularly opposed to the very static interpretation that Huntington gave to the concept of civilization, namely as if these were more or less separate containers. He is certainly not the only or the first one to give this justified criticism. The problem is that Wengrow then goes on to deal with very different aspects of ancient Near Eastern history, with very different themes and angles of view. His intent is to show how civilizations are constantly changing and also interacting with each other. He certainly regularly brings up interesting things, but you can not say that he show more convincingly makes his point. So mixed feelings. More about that in my History account on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4599372837 show less