The Great Divide: Book summary and reviews of The Great Divide by Peter Watson

The Great Divide Summary

Peter Watson, the acclaimed author of Ideas and The German Genius, offers a groundbreaking new exploration of the progress of human history. Watson's The Great Divide compares and contrasts the development of humankind between the "Old World" and the "New" - between 15,000 B.C. and 1,500 A.D - and, like Jarod Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel, Watson's remarkable book offers a fascinating, all-encompassing, highly readable overview of how human civilization has grown and expanded.

Combining the most up-to-date findings in archaeology, anthropology, geology, meteorology, cosmology and mythology, this unprecedented, masterful study offers uniquely revealing insights into what it means to be human.

The Great Divide Reviews

"Inevitably, some of his speculations feel forced... Still, like Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel, his grand-scale history contains fascinating insights at every turn." - Publishers Weekly

"Starred Review. Watson makes a fascinating case that while there may be a single human nature, long exposure to dissimilar landscapes, food, animals and climate created two unique approaches to this nature." - Kirkus Reviews

"...Impossible, of course, to summarise this massive book in a small review. Sufficient, perhaps, to say that the year's first necessary read is here." - Christopher Bray, Word Magazine

"In drawing together evidence from complex strands of archaeology, climatology, genetics and religious symbolism, Watson is compulsively speculative." - Peter Forbes, The Independent (UK)

The information about The Great Divide shown above was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's online-magazine that keeps our members abreast of notable and high-profile books publishing in the coming weeks. In most cases, the reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author of this book and feel that the reviews shown do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, please send us a message with the mainstream media reviews that you would like to see added.

The Great Divide Reader Reviews

Click here and be the first to review this book!

Peter Watson has written for the New York Times, The Observer, The Spectator, and numerous other publications. He is the author of Ideas, War on the Mind, Wisdom and Strength, The Caravaggio Conspiracy, and other books. He lives in London.