Leaders and Their Movements - Discussing Themes of Progress in World History

Dawns is a community for history enthusiasts interested in understanding the big picture of human history.
The way it works is that there is a different theme each month:

• January: the natural world (kinship or commodity)
• February: industrial modernisation (industrial revolutions 1-4)
• March: "the axial age" (Moses, Buddha, Socrates, Laozi, Zoroaster)
• April: literary history (oral to internet)
• May: energy (from muscle to nuclear)
• June: different modes of living (e.g. pastoralists, fishing)
• July: history of science (Aristotle, Newton etc)
• August: politics and power (tribes to superpowers)
• September: art history (who and what is art for?)
• October: cradles of civilisation (Egypt, Mesopotamia, Indus Valley, Yellow River, Olmecs and Chico Norte)
• November: economics and trade (bartering to bitcoin?)
• December: progressive revelation (Abraham, Moses, Jesus Christ, Muhammed, Baháʼu'lláh)

There are 5 recommended texts each month - you can read one or more of them if you'd like and this will form the basis of the live discussion.

This is considered an "intentional community" which exists to study human history in the spirit of common humanity.

So it's like a community which agrees that the world needs a new meta-narrative because the old ones are mutually exclusive and seen as not inclusive enough by broad segments of the population - which is driving culture wars and distracting massively from sustainable development.

We don't purport to dictate the meta-narrative of human history - however we intend to help people build their own meta-narratives or meta-frameworks for understanding how all people are part of the same story and share common heritage.

Please join us on telegram to build friendships and feel belonging https://www.launchpass.com/brites/dawns.
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January: the natural world

• J. Donald Hughes, An Environmental History of the World
• Juliet Clutton-Brock, A Natural History of Domesticated Mammals
• Keith Thomas, Man and the Natural World
• Donald Worster, Nature's Economy
• Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

February: Industrial revolutions

• Peter Laslett, The World We Have Lost
• Robert Allen, The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective
• E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class
• Robert Gordon, The Rise and Fall of American Growth
• Chris Miller, Chip War

March: The axial age

• Karen Armstrong, The Great Transformation
• Benjamin Schwartz, The World of Thought in Ancient China
• Romila Thapar, Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300
• Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman, The Bible Unearthed
• Robin Lane Fox, The Classical World

April: Literary history

• Walter Ong, Orality and Literacy
• Martin Puchner, The Written World
• Erich Auerbach, Mimesis
• Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel
• Pascale Casanova, The World Republic of Letters

May: Energy

• Vaclav Smil, Energy and Civilization: A History
• Alfred Crosby, Children of the Sun
• Richard Rhodes, Energy: A Human History
• Andreas Malm, Fossil Capital
• Daniel Yergin, The Prize

June: Different modes of living

• Bill Gammage, The Biggest Estate on Earth
• Anatoly Khazanov, Nomads and the Outside World
• Patrick Kirch, On the Road of the Winds: An Archaeological History of the Pacific Islands
• James C. Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed
• Chris Jennings, Paradise Now: The Story of American Utopianism

July: The scientific worldview

• Steven Weinberg, To Explain the World
• Jim Al-Khalili, The House of Wisdom
• Thomas Kuhn, The Copernican Revolution
• Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything
• Carlo Rovelli, The First Scientist: Anaximander and His Legacy

August: Politics and power

• Christopher Boehm, Hierarchy in the Forest
• Francis Fukuyama, The Origins of Political Order
• David Stasavage, The Decline and Rise of Democracy
• Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities
• Lynn Hunt, Inventing Human Rights

September: Art history

• E.H. Gombrich, The Story of Art
• David Lewis-Williams, The Mind in the Cave
• Michael Baxandall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy
• Robert Hughes, The Shock of the New
• Julian Stallabrass, Contemporary Art: A Very Short Introduction

October: Cradles of civilisation

• Marc Van De Mieroop, A History of the Ancient Near East ca. 3000-323 BC
• Toby Wilkinson, The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt
• Li Feng, Early China: A Social and Cultural History
• Gregory Possehl, The Indus Civilization: A Contemporary Perspective
• Charles C. Mann, 1491

November: Economics and trade

• David Graeber, Debt: The First 5,000 Years
• James C. Scott, Against the Grain
• William Bernstein, A Splendid Exchange
• Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton
• Jeffry Frieden, Global Capitalism: Its Fall and Rise in the Twentieth Century

December: Progressive revelation

• Karen Armstrong, A History of God
• Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman, The Bible Unearthed
• Geza Vermes, The Religion of Jesus the Jew
• Fred Donner, Muhammad and the Believers
• Moojan Momen, The Bábí and Bahá'í Religions, 1844-1944