Our Shadowed World

Many accounts treat civilization as a steady climb toward a better life. This book argues that the same history also contains domination, exploitation, armed conflict and empire. Its aim is to use an understanding of the past to encourage people to imagine other possible futures.

The author follows the path from the first city-states to the twentieth century's world wars and the Holocaust, showing how civilization produced its own kind of brutality. Along the way the book asks which beliefs shaped human choices and how people have tried to make sense of the world around them.

It contends that the drive for power, the pull of greed and the force of extreme convictions have now placed civilization itself under serious question. Even with growing ecological concern and sustained interest in apocalyptic thinking, the future of humanity in its current form remains uncertain.