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Download PDF Jonas' Introduction to the U.S. Health Care System, 8th Edition

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Jonas' Introduction to the U.S. Health Care System, 8th Edition

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About the Author

Raymond Goldsteen, DrPH , is Director, MPH Program and Professor, Department of Family and Community Medicine, School of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of North Dakota. He was founding Director of the Graduate Program in Public Health and Professor of Preventive Medicine in the School of Medicine at SUNY Stony Brook. Dr. Goldsteen has an extensive background in health care and was formerly a director of the health policy research centers at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, University of Oklahoma College of Public Health, and the West Virginia University School of Medicine. He is co-author of Introduction to Public Health, now in its second edition.

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Product details

Paperback: 272 pages

Publisher: Springer Publishing Company; 8 edition (June 27, 2016)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0826131743

ISBN-13: 978-0826131744

Product Dimensions:

7 x 0.6 x 10 inches

Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)

Average Customer Review:

4.6 out of 5 stars

5 customer reviews

Amazon Best Sellers Rank:

#148,735 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Very informative book on the delivery systems of healthcare. Tons of information, this was a suggested book for school that I got anyways and I'm glad I did.

Excellent book

good book

A great in depth look into the the US health care.

The book is in great condition for a rental. Thank you!

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Free PDF Xi Jinping: The Governance of China Volume 1: [English Language Version], by Xi Jinping

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Review

"Certainly [President Xi] is working hard at being the confident father to the nation, developing an image which is much less constrained and technocratic than his immediate predecessors." —BBC"I've also bought copies of this book for my colleagues. I want them to understand socialism with Chinese characteristics." —Mark Zuckerberg, Founder and CEO, Facebook"The Governance of China [was]…laid out on a table at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit's media center. It's unusual to see such a publication issued for a Chinese leader still in office." —U.S. News and World Report"In addition to his fondness for Confucius, Mr. Xi has also displayed a penchant for American poetry, quoting U.S. poet Marianne Moore during a recent visit by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry." —Wall Street Journal"The book is the latest sign that Xi overshadows most of his predecessors in terms of his promotion on the public stage." —Economic Times"Xi's compilation of speeches and writings, "The Governance of China," sold more than three million copies since its September publication, and has been translated into five languages. Almost every party boss, down to village level, owns a copy." —Bloomberg"The book explains the position of the Chinese president and the central leadership of the country, which could help us understand China's politics." —Gerhard Schroeder, Former German Chancellor"At great length, the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao explains to the world how China works, what it intends to do in the coming years during his tenure at the top and how its unique governing system will get it there." —Huffington Post

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About the Author

Xi Jinping, born 15 June 1953, is the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, the President of the People's Republic of China, and the Chairman of the Central Military Commission.

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Product details

Paperback: 515 pages

Publisher: Shanghai Press (February 17, 2015)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 1602204098

ISBN-13: 978-1602204096

Product Dimensions:

6 x 1.4 x 9 inches

Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)

Average Customer Review:

4.2 out of 5 stars

52 customer reviews

Amazon Best Sellers Rank:

#227,317 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Not what I had hoped for. Rather than giving a detailed view of how Xi governs China, it is a series of speeches. They are good speeches, as political speeches go: let's have less corruption and work better together. But they become repetitive and who knows what they mean in practice. Maybe a Chinese Political Science 101 text book would have more suited my needs.

Very well written! A book about china's past, present and it's future through the eyes of the most ambitious Chinese leadership. Not only that it tells the history, but it also narrates the important global events and domestic challenges as the President Xi Jinping handles them and sets the strategy for the ruling party to continue to support his agenda for the global leadership.

No substance, just a series of propaganda speeches. Very disappointing.

Bad translation from Chinese to English. What the President says in its original version, it does not mean the same as in English.

CHINESE DAO IN 21ST CENTURY ACCORDING TO FUNG EXPLAINEDTHE RISE OF CHINA AS A POLITICAL MERITOCRACY AND CIVILIZATION STATEBY FRANCIS C W FUNG, PH. D.Fung’s essay of Chinese Dao (Ways) in 21st century is a five part Dao story of the rise of China as a meritocracy and civilization state. China is the only ancient civilization that has a continuous uninterrupted five thousand years history in the world. The Chinese Confucian philosophy extended to the world and heavily influenced the governance of South Eastern Asian nations to this day. The economic success of the Asian nations during the 20th century globalization is largely credited to the Confucian emphasis of education and hard work. But what has escaped the West’s global dialogue is the most important tradition of meritocracy governance of China as a civilization state. This is because the West is blinded by our liberal democratic ideology as not to see the most important Chinese contribution of meritocracy governance system to the world. The success of Singapore and China in the 20th century globalization as outstanding examples of meritocracy governed nations now proved the utter failure of the arrogant and premature Francis Fukuyama’s “theory of the end of civilization”.Throughout China’s five thousand years of rich civilization there were numerous outstanding philosophers such as Confucius, Mencius and Laotze etc. These and other famous philosophers created school of thoughts that are holistic and dedicated to serve all mankind for the good. These began with the Confucian governance system of Huang Dao (Grand Way) for the ultimate emperor. Confucian teachings of the grand way (Huang Dao) are; good governance must be based on the well-being of the people(Yi ren wei ben), to walk the grand way, the world works for the interest of all people(Da Dao zhi xing,Tien xia wei gong), select the outstanding and appoint the capable(Xuan xian yu neng) and unity of mankind(Sei jie da tong). Inspired by these grand holistic visions Chinese people are more inclined to think globally and holistically compared to the West that highly value individualism. These holistic inspirations will lead China to the 21st century to strive for win win cooperation and global community of common destiny as exemplified by the five Chinese Dao (ways) stories in Fung’s essay.The five Dao stories of the rise of China as a meritocracy and civilization state are:(I)CHINA AS THE CIVILIZATION STATE WITH THE GRAND WAY(HUANG DAO)China as a civilization state of long tradition with a predominant Confucian philosophy has practiced meritocracy throughout history. During the emperor days, the power of the emperors was constrained by the advice of their mandarin court. The mandarins in the court were selected through imperial examinations that were open to the whole population. The standard of the examinations were set by Confucian teachings of the grand way (Huang Dao), such as good governance must be based on the well-being of the people(Yi ren wei ben), the world works for the interest of all people(Tien xia wei gong), select the outstanding and appoint the capable(Xuan xian yu neng) and unity of mankind(Sei jie da tong). With this Confucian high ideal of the grand way(Huang Dao) to guide China’s meritocracy governance China remain the highest civilization state of the world for most world history. During the last two thousand years except for the last two hundred years China was the most advanced and prosperous empire in the world. China was behind in the European industrial revolution but guided by her civilization state meritocracy China rapidly caught up with the West during the last four decades. Today China is the second largest economy and the world’s number one trading nation again.(II) VERTICAL POLITICAL MERITOCRACY DEMOCRACY AS DAO PRACTICED IN CHINAAfter many years of extensive research, Daniel Bell, chair professor of the Schwarzman Scholars Program at Tsinghua University, in “The China Model” reported that China has a long tradition of meritocracy practice. The Chinese Communist Party (CPC) has a very large Organization Department which tests and trains the cadres for promotion. The tests and programs are rigorous and also include nominations by piers and superiors. Periodic skill trainings are conducted with sophisticated party school courses.Chinese political meritocracy is firmly implemented at top level of government and election at lower village level, not unlike the Bahai system of governance. Chinese top leaders at the politburo level need at least three terms of duty at large city or provincial level with hundreds of millions of citizens. This is called a vertical system of meritocracy democracy by Professor Daniel Bell. That we in the U.S. totally missed China’s development of the Dao of the political meritocracy democracy as legitimate governance system is because of our preoccupation to spread our liberal democracy ideology to maintain hegemony. The risks that we missed this China Dao of development cannot be overestimated. This is of paramount importance that the new Trump government now be informed of China’s vertical political meritocracy democracy so we can remain engaged with important development and stay competitive. (III) CHINESE DAO OF “HE” CULTURE IS SOCIALISM WTH CHINESE CHARACTERISTICS“HE” culture is the Chinese harmony philosophy of Confucian and Daoism teaching. According to Professor Daniel Bell, the eminent Western Confucian scholar at Tsinghua University, Confucians emphasize that a good life is characterized, first and foremost, by rich and diverse social relations. Harmony, at a minimum, means peaceful order in the absence of violence. Conflict is unavoidable; harmony is the result of dynamic balance of contending forces. The Confucian idea of harmony also values diversity (Hai na bei chuan, you yon na da).Under the grand Dao of harmony, Xi Jinping, the president of China, is travelling the world to promote win win cooperation, mutual development, and community of common destiny. Hope is high that the newly elected U.S. president will accept the new major power relation proposed by Xi and not confront China. Please refer to my published essay “Why Xi Jinping, the president of China is good for China and world harmony”. (Please google worldharmonyforum.blogspot.com/ under harmony renaissance).(IV) THE CHINESE DAO OF INTERNET CULTURE IS ABOUT GOOD FOR THE LARGEST DENOMINATION (YI REN WEI BEN)The Chinese belief is holistic, good for the largest denomination. American highly value individualism and freedom. Confucian philosophy teaches the grand way for the world (Huang Dao), such as good governance must be based on the well-being of all the people (Yi ren wei ben), the world works for the interest of all people (Tien xia wei gong) not just one nation, select the outstanding and appoint the capable (Xuan xian yu neng) and unity of mankind (Sei jie da tong). Because individualism is highly valued, the U.S. government uses the internet to promote identity politics and political correctness, by so doing sets a limit to its internet growth to the largest denomiation. On the contrary Chinese internet sets its sight on good for the largest demonization. As a result Chinese internet is more pervasive and far reaching. That is why even China is an internet late comer it’s internet is fast surpassing America. Of the ten largest internet enterprise five of them are in China and continue to grow. Today Nov 11 is the singles day Alibaba internet sale in China. In one day the sale of one trillion RMB sales surpassed the combined America total sales of Thanksgiving, Christmas and black Friday.(V) THE CHINESE DAO OF “ONE BELT ONE ROAD” INITIATIVEThe ancient Silk Road that connects Europe with China through Central Asia is more than just a road of commerce. It is also a road of exchange for people, culture, technolongy and civilization. The four great inventions of China were transmitted to Europe through the Silk Road. Without those important inventions the European renaissance may not have happened or would be drastically reduced in scale or delayed. In 2003 President Xi Jinping of China announced the grand initiative of the Economic Development Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road (abbreviated as One Belt one Road).Since launching the initiative China has set up the Silk Road fund and Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank to finance infrastructures all over the world. China also built many highways, bridges, ports and railways through many difficult terrains connecting China with Europe through Central Asia. Many nations on the strategic route including Central, Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Arab countries are now embracing the One Belt One Road Initiative. For more information on the fast growth of One belt One Road initiative, google the subject and specific essays such as “Europe Finally Wakes Up To The New Silk Road, And This Could Be Big”.March 31, 2015 is a historic moment. China successfully launched the Asian Infrastructure Bank to fund the New Silk Road Initiative to provide connectivity for the world. Japan the last U.S. major military alliance country announced today that it would join the China infrastructure bank! By now all U.S. allies have all broke from their military alliance with America and join the peaceful mutual development initiative. The only redeeming grace for America is to join as observer country at a later day. It is natural for China to launch the New Silk Road Initiative, because of all the historical, technological, financial capability and infrastructure building experience reasons. China in the last 39 years has built 20 trillion dollars of infrastructure in her own country. This super scale of construction in such a short time has no historical precedence!Francis C W Fung, Ph.D.Director GeneralWorld Harmony Organization, San Francisco, CA

This series of speeches demonstrates Xi Jinping's belief that Chinese political thought is evolving over the generations (Guiding Principles of the CPC speech, November 17, 2012, or Kindle version at 2%). Recalling 5,000 year history of China, Xi Jinping offers in these writings a fusion of modern and traditional thought. There may be similarity, for example, in the "path, theory, and system" of present-day Chinese socialism (Kindle version, at 2%) and the traditional idea of the reinforcing links of "government, ruler, and law" in the book of Huainanzi, which itself sought to combine or develop Legalist, Confucian, and Taoist schools of thought (see Wikipedia entry for Huainanzi, and the Roger T. Ames translation of Huai-nan Tzu or "The Art of Rulership: A Study of Ancient Chinese Political Thought", Kindle version at 2%: "So government was instituted to prevent the people from doing what they pleased, the ruler to prevent government from doing what it pleased, laws, etc. to prevent the ruler from doing what he pleased."). Again, there may be a likeness of these political ideas because both the "law" in the traditional case and the "system" in today's China ensures success: Xi Jinping writes "The Congress stressed that the path of socialism with Chinese characteristics is a way to reach the goal, the theory offers a guide to action, and the system provides a fundamental guarantee." (Kindle at 3%, Guiding Principles of the CPC, November 17, 2012).Among the other traditional ideas applied in these speeches, there are probably the following:a. Legalist political philosophy, that all people have a responsibility to follow the law, is evident in recent and ongoing anti-corruption efforts (Xi Kindle at 5%, and Ames Kindle at 4%: "The author [Liu An and other scholars] couches his political philosophy in a series of loosely connected yet consistent discussions devoted to predominantly Legalist concepts.");b. Confucianism, in the sense that education and hard work have great value, is seen in the speeches to youth groups (Kindle at 9%);c. Taoism, in the sense that harmony with nature is important, may be consistent with the repeated calls for ecological improvements in China (see Kindle at 10%: "We should comprehensively promote socialist economic, political, social and ecological advancement").d. Western ideas, in the sense of democracy with Chinese characteristics or the ability to petition or write to the government, and socialism, are evident (but with primacy for socialism and economic development) in the declared goal of a "prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced, and harmonious" China by 2049 (see Kindle at 11%).e. New Confucianism: "advocates for certain Confucianist elements of society - such social, ecological, and political harmony - to be applied in a contemporary context in synthesis with Western philosophies" (from Wikipedia listing). Regarding this title, Xi Jinping's statement that "China needs to learn more about the rest of the world, and the outside world needs to learn more about China" ("The People's Wish for a Good Life Is Our Goal", November 15, 2012, or Kindle at 2%) is consistent with the "New Confucian Manifesto" section on the above Wikipedia entry ("...the Manifesto argues that while China must learn from the West modern science and democracy, the West must learn from China (and the Confucian tradition in particular) "a more all-encompassing wisdom" ").However, there are significant distinctions too. One distinction of Huainanzi thought and socialism with Chinese characteristics is the the priority of society before the individual. Xi Jinping writes that "One can only do well when one's country and nation do well, Only if everyone strives for a better tomorrow can our efforts be aggregated into a powerful force to realize the Chinese Dream (Kindle at 12%). In contrast, "The Art of Rulership", as interpreted by Ames, holds that: "Further, this alternative [written by Liu An and other scholars] would underwrite the principle of universal self-determination on the basis that the realization of the part is coextensive with the realization of the whole, that individual fulfillment leads directly and inevitably to social harmony and political stability." (Ames Kindle at 4%). The Han court did not accept this new formulation of ideas proposed by Liu An, with its seemingly democratic and federalist aspects, but of course continued to support individual elements of Legalism, Confucianism, Taoism.Returning to current times, in the call to "boost the scientific way of development, and to continue to lay a solid material and cultural foundation for realizing the Chinese Dream" (Kindle at 10%) it is notable that China continues the development of clean energy, and nuclear power stations, both supported by Jiang Zemin (see Amazon customer reviews for "Research on Energy Issues in China" and "The Politics of Nuclear Energy in China" by Xu Yi-Chong). By using Western science, Chinese manufacturing and construction of nuclear power stations, and long-term planning, China can make progress in providing ample electricity and clean air to its citizens. As an academic observer and one who is impressed with the improvement of nuclear energy in China, including innovative small modular reactors being developed by Tsinghua University, I hope for advances in the health and prosperity of Chinese people and consequential benefits to the climate and biosphere.With a continued fusion, and evolution, of Chinese political thought and its application in the economy and energy sectors, one can be optimistic that the China will reach the goals for a "moderately prosperous society in all respects" by its centenary in 2021 (see "Hard Work Makes Dreams Come True", April 28, 2013 speech).

For anyone interested in world affairs and how China has become a true world leader. You can 'see' the true political powerhouse that Xi has become worldwide, including South America, especially Brazil, how his arms are being embraced in Africa, Central America, Europe and even the Antilles.

In one hand we have a speach book: it brings Jinping main speaches in the period of his presidency. It turns the book a little repetitive. In the other hand, it brings the main thoughts and goals that China believe. Important material to a better comprehension on China's issues.

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Print Length: 256 pages

Publisher: Howard Books (May 21, 2019)

Publication Date: May 21, 2019

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File Size: 3209 KB

Print Length: 335 pages

Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0300182910

Publisher: Yale University Press; 1 edition (August 22, 2017)

Publication Date: August 1, 2017

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This outstanding book, by the anarchist-tending academic James C. Scott, might be (but isn’t) subtitled “Barbarians Are Happier, Fatter and Better Looking.” The author does not believe the myth of the noble savage—but he thinks the savage is, on average, a lot better off than the peasant. Scott’s project is to remold our view of the early days of civilization, erasing the sharp lines usually drawn to separate the first states from the social groups which preceded them, and dismissing the judgment that more organized is always better.“Against the Grain” is erudite, smoothly written, and gives the reader a lot of food for thought—not just about how to view early states and other social groupings, but also about how human flourishing should be viewed and understood. Should we prize the material and cultural milestones generated by a society, even if they come at the price of hardship for most, commanded by elites who appropriate their output? Or should our touchstone be the immediate happiness of the masses, even if what the society produces is therefore utterly unmemorable and does not advance mankind? That is—in what does human “flourishing” consist? These are issues that Scott only touches on, but it seems to me they necessarily arise from his arguments, which are not complete without answers to these questions.Most of Scott’s analysis revolves around the Mesopotamia of 3000 B.C. or so, although he touches on a few other societies of different times and places to illustrate and flesh out his points. The backbone of Scott’s book is his claim that “sedentism long preceded evidence of plant and animal domestication and that both sedentism and domestication were in place at least four millennia before anything like agricultural villages appeared.” Thus, contrary to the usual linear view of state formation, some humans settled in more-or-less one place, but did not form social groups more complex than bands, or perhaps tribes in some cases (Scott does not use the traditional group nomenclature of band, tribe, chiefdom, etc.). Therefore, the traditional story arc, of states automatically arising (though for reasons which are disputed) as soon as crops and sedentism appeared, is, Scott tells us, wholly wrong.Of course, before domesticated crops, sedentism was possible only where local conditions were ideal—that is, where what nature (modified to some degree by man, most of all by fire) provided the bounty and diversity that enabled humans to live off the land. Where this was true, though, people were able to live well for centuries, and to live much better, healthier lives than later state dwellers. (Scott is fond of referring negatively to early states, hotbeds of disease, vermin, and drudgery, as “the late Neolithic multispecies resettlement camp.”) Alluvial plains with intermittent water flows from rivers or oceans were ideal, including southern Mesopotamia and China around the Yellow River. Such wetland societies are Scott’s main focus. “They were based on what are now called ‘common property resources’—free-living plants, animals, and aquatic creatures to which the entire community had access.” The rest of the world, of course, remained nomadic to the degree a particular locale lacked such resources.Having established that sedentary lifestyles did not immediately, or even soon, result in states, the core of Scott’s project is not just to distinguish sedentary life from state life. It is also to explode the idea that pre-state societies were somehow inferior to the first states. (Scott might even say they were not inferior to modern states, either, but he does not address that question.) In fact, sedentism itself is not necessarily forward progress, whether it ends in states or not. There is no “social will to sedentism,” and alternatives to sedentism were at this time highly varied, both in type and over time, with porous borders and frequent movement along a gradient between sedentism and nomadism, depending on everything from climatic conditions to migratory patterns of wild animals. And for most people who were not state elites, living with that variability was highly desirable, because the diversification of food sources and methods of acquisition created a much more stable, enjoyable, and healthy life environment, in most cases, than states based on a small number of grain crops requiring constant heavy labor to ensure a decent harvest. Therefore, living in a state was neither a necessary nor a desirable development, from the perspective of any individual Neolithic person.So, if four thousand years elapsed between the time people settled and when states formed in those same area, and people were getting along fine, why did states form at all? Not for Scott a Hobbesian vision of the state offering people a relief from the horror of life outside the state—on the contrary, for most people, the Hobbesian state is a step down. Scott’s project is effectively to invert Hobbes’s claim that the life of pre-state man is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short” to be “social, comfortable, enjoyable, (relatively) peaceful and longer.” Scott says little about warfare among non-state peoples in Mesopotamia; I suspect he understates its prevalence, but it does appear that non-state people were better fed, and they certainly worked less. And in these naturally productive geographic areas, at least, there was no need to adopt the drudgery of agricultural labor, organized on the state level, to survive.While specific mechanics are not his focus, Scott believes instead that what drove state formation was the gradual emergence of fully domesticated grain crops. “What is required is wealth in the form of an appropriable, measurable, dominant grain crop and a population growing it that can be easily administered and mobilized.” Grain is thus the root of all state formation. No grain, no state. Scott relates the characteristics of domesticated grains, and then contrasts how those grain crops are far superior to other crops, such as tubers (cassava, potatoes) from the perspective of state administrators and tax collectors (because grain is portable, storable, and all ripens at the same time). Scott directs the Agrarian Studies Program at Yale, and he is clearly extremely knowledgeable about crops, which increases the readers interest by allowing well-chosen examples that bring the topics at hand to life. The book’s title, “Against the Grain,” is actually a double pun—first, in that the book is contrarian to received wisdom on state formation; second, in that the crux of that contrarian view is that domesticated grain is largely a negative for most early humans, because it prevented the type of egalitarian flourishing that Scott favors, rather favoring the elite and the flourishing that comes from elite dominance of the masses. But we will get to that.Scott also spends quite a bit of time on the more general process of domestication, of “niche construction.” He speculates (his word) on human parallels, suggesting that as humans domesticated crops and animals, they were also domesticating themselves, giving themselves some of the same characteristics of domesticated herd animals—including, perhaps, a reduced tendency to violence (Steven Pinker, call your office). Scott apparently raises sheep himself, and he defends sheep against those who think they have, um, sheep-like characteristics—not that they don’t have those characteristics, just that it’s not fair of us to make fun of them when we created those characteristics ourselves.Subsumed within this agrarian focus on state formation are topics on which Scott focuses in his other books, including the luminous “Seeing Like A State,” such as the importance of “legibility” of the population to the state and the tendency of the state to ignore the knowledge of people that cannot be systematized and reduced to transferable data (and therefore the inevitable failure of many state projects, especially those of “high modernism”). Along with grain becoming an available and dominant crop, for a state to form the population must have few options other than participating in the state, since Scott is convinced no rational person would choose to live in a state, at least as a member of the mass rather than the elite, if he had the option of a reasonable non-state life. Exit options can be constrained by simple lack of alternatives, such as no nearby place that can support a hunter-gathering lifestyle reliably, or by violence, either outside threats or the state coercing its subjects to remain in place. To the extent people cannot be constrained, and leave, they can be replenished with slaves, purchased or won in combat. Thus, the state is inherently unnatural, compared with a semi-sedentary, hunter-gatherer lifestyle.To buttress this argument, Scott notes that early states were extremely fragile. They were subject to the same stresses faced by subsistence peoples, such as climactic changes, along with additional ones, such as vastly increased risks for disease (for which increased rates of reproduction were necessary to compensate, something Scott darkly implies is bad without saying why, probably by reflex), and the results of deforestation and salinization. They also featured the tendency of elites to squeeze the population too hard in times of external crisis. Yet they lacked the flexibility of movement or dispersal that allowed subsistence peoples to react gradually and with reasonable grace to changes or problems.But Scott sees the inevitable end of fragility not so much as collapse in the sense of, say, Troy, but as “disassembly” of the state back into constituent units of subsistence people. And, critically, he does not see this as necessarily bad, or even often bad. He seems to think, though he never exactly says so, that the people are better off. After all, he’s clear that pre-state peoples find their lives worse off in states—so after a collapse, their lives must, on average, be better. “Unlike many historians, I wonder whether the frequent abandonment of early state centers might often have been a boon to the health and safety of their populations rather than a ‘dark age’ signaling collapse of a civilization.” Our view is conditioned by mostly being transmitted by two negative pieces of evidence: writings about “collapses” by those most negatively affected, and archaeological evidence of disaster. Dispersed (happy) populations with a light footprint, gamboling through the meadows, leave neither writing nor much archaeological evidence. Maybe the collapse of early states, at least, was often for the best. In fact, collapses of states don’t, in Scott’s view, even cause a deterioration in culture. “[A] collapse at the center is less likely to mean a dissolution of a culture than its reformulation and decentralization.” We will return to this bold claim below.Scott seems to march to the beat of his own drummer. His entire project, and much of his academic output, does not fit neatly into any category. “Seeing Like A State,” his best-known book, attacks as ignorant and failed most large-scale state social engineering, and should be required reading for all politicians and well-informed people. His books aren’t political books in the sense of didactic, though; they’re much more works of political anthropology. And while no conservative, he refuses to pander to political correctness, using (horrors!) terms like “mankind,” while noting in passing that Europeans didn’t originate the African slave trade, but merely “had joined the Arabs in scouring the slaving ports of the African continent for slaves.” Scott also repeatedly notes that slavery was universal among non-state peoples, contrary to the common myth that slavery is somehow a byproduct of (usually European) civilization—and, in fact, was especially common among “manpower-hungry Native American peoples.” All of these points are anathema in most academic circles today, but I suppose when you’re eighty and mighty in your field, you do what you want.Scott rejects that non-state peoples are lazy, or, in the language sometimes used, have “high time preference.” He maintains that hunter-gatherers, contrary to myth, frequently delay returns and engage in complex long-term behaviors to acquire food, rather than just stumbling across berries—in particular “mass capture” of animals during migrations, as well as sculpting the landscape through fire, weeding, and so forth. Nor are they ignorant; they know an enormous amount about their environment and the living things in it. Yes, the tempo of their lives is different, dictated by nature, but often it involves “bursts of intense activity over short periods of time.” The reader gets the impression that Scott thinks that a Mesopotamian hunter-gatherer would be a much more interesting dinner companion than a modern factory worker (which is probably correct). He cites Tocqueville’s comment upon reading Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of Nations”: “What can be expected of a man who has spent twenty years of his life putting heads on pins?” In other words—the drudgery inherent in increased productivity crushes the individuality out of humans. It kills human flourishing, at least mental flourishing, for the masses.Finally, Scott sums it all up by focusing on the “Golden Age of the Barbarians.” As with much of the book, this is fascinating because it turns the focus from the way we normally think of populations outside of civilizations. As Scott repeatedly points out, until very recently (roughly 1600 A.D.), the vast majority of the human populations were “barbarian” (a term Scott explicitly uses ironically to mean merely any people outside state control). Being barbarian was, for the reasons he outlines throughout the book, much better for an individual. In fact, contrary to the usual practice, Scott ascribes the creation of many tribes (rather than bands, implicitly) not to pre-state groupings, but to those fleeing state control and becoming barbarians. And a great many barbarians didn’t just live in savagery—they merely, as with states, competed for the surplus produced by grain centers, but differently, through raiding and the imposition of tribute requirements, rather than by directly coercing the sedentary masses to produce crops. Barbarians weren’t so much uncivilized as differently civilized. The reader gets the distinct impression that Scott would be happy to have been a Gothic tribesman of, say, 400 A.D.All this is very well done. But where Scott lets the reader down somewhat is in failing to distinguish between two very different modes in which non-state early societies could be judged superior, or at least not inferior, to early states. The first, on which Scott exclusively focuses without acknowledging he is doing so, is the health and happiness of individual humans, viewed through the utilitarian frame of the greatest good for the greatest number of people alive at any given time. The second, which Scott almost totally ignores, is human accomplishment, both in its high points accomplished at great cost, and in its movement forward of the baseline of human health and happiness.Put most bluntly, is human flourishing maximized if mankind were to have remained hunter gatherers forever, not subject to states and largely free, but not advancing in any material way, or is it maximized if, through what we can stipulate is a great deal of additional suffering, the average human of a hundred or a thousand or five thousand years later is made better off, materially and culturally? Maybe an anarchist thinks the former, especially if he denies that forward progress is more likely under states (a hard argument to make with a straight face; collective accomplishment under the command of an elite is probably necessary for any real progress), and especially if he is the end point of that improvement and is looking backwards over a glass of Chardonnay bought at Costco.As a starting point to examine material and cultural progress, we can agree with Scott that overall production, GDP if you will, is greater with states. “[U]ntil the state extracts and appropriates this surplus, any dormant additional production that might exist is ‘consumed’ in leisure and cultural elaboration.” Thus, humans outside of states are producing less than they could. The problem, though, is that “cultural elaboration” here is mostly a nice word for carving bones to put through your nose—there is no evidence that non-state peoples had any culture, except in the broadest sense. Scott does not define culture, but he clearly believes that the culture of a band of humans who, several generations back, fled a city due to epidemic or invasion is by no means inferior to the culture of a city. To most people, these things cannot be compared, because one is much greater. The glory of man consists in the highest products of his culture, which, unfortunately, almost always rest to a greater or lesser degree on the suffering of others.Scott argues that Neolithic peoples were rational in avoiding states, and in fleeing them at the first sign of fragility or collapse. “The first and most prudent assumption about historical actors is that, given their resources and what they know, they are acting reasonably to secure their immediate interests.” True enough—but this is not enough to ensure the march of civilization. One can reasonably differ on whether that march is actually good—maybe we’d all be better off as subsistence collectors of shellfish, rather than as masters of nuclear weapons. Of course, there would be a lot fewer of us—not that Scott seems to think more is better, given his disapproval of state attempts to boost populations. The reader still can’t shake the feeling that, deep down, Scott wishes he were not here, but was cracking mussels on a rock, somewhere overlooking the wetland plain around what is now Basra, five thousand years ago. Like Minniver Cheevy, Scott was born too late.Yes, a Mesopotamian barbarian of 3000 B.C. might well have been happier than the Mesopotamian peasant. But, other than perhaps Scott himself, who would choose to be a Mesopotamian barbarian today? A few people might, but once they realized that their lot would be plenty of leisure, along with filariasis and a zillion other diseases, they would not persist. If, however, humans as a whole had magically been given, in 3000 B.C., the data offered by Scott, and the choice whether to form states, and had chosen to avoid states, we would still be hunting, gathering, and “marine collecting.” Scott seems to think that would have been preferable.Or, to take a non-health example, do we prefer the cultural achievements of Greece with city-states, or that of the Greek “Dark Ages” (roughly 1100 B.C. to 800 B.C.)? The answer is obvious, though Scott tries to evade the answer by muttering that the “Iliad” was an oral creation of the Dark Ages. True enough, but the exception proves the rule. “[T]here is a strong case to be made that such ‘vacant’ periods represented a bolt for freedom by many state subjects and an improvement in human welfare.” Thus, the fall of Rome was arguably an improvement—it “restored the ‘old regional patchwork’ that had prevailed before the Empire was cobbled together from its constituent units.” Scott thus denies that the cultural whole can be greater than the sum of its parts, certainly a bold claim. “What is lost culturally when a large state center is abandoned or destroyed is thus an empirical question [not that he addresses it]. Surely it is likely to have an effect on the division of labor, and scale of trade, and on monumental architecture. On the other hand, it is just as likely that the culture will survive—and be developed—in multiple smaller centers no longer in thrall to the center. On must never confound culture with state centers or the apex of a court culture with its broader foundations.” Maybe. But is it really likely that Michelangelo would have “developed” in a village, or a band of near-savages sitting on a midden of discarded oyster shells? The reader suspects that Scott sees no hierarchy of culture, and thinks that oyster shell beads cannot be judged inferior to the Sistine Chapel. This suspicion is reinforced when Scott goes on, in the context of denying that “dark ages” are bad, about the importance of the “democratization of culture” resulting from collapse (again citing the “Iliad” as superior, because supposedly egalitarian, to “texts that depend less on performance than on a small class of literate elites who can read them.”). “There may well be, then, a great deal to be said on behalf of classical dark ages in terms of human well-being.” Namely, less taxes, less war, less disease, and they “may even usher in a modest degree of egalitarianism” and “a reformulation and a diversity of cultural production.”Maybe. But almost certainly not. The whiff of anarchist utopia pervades this set of conclusions. Not that that undermines this excellent book—actually, it feels a bit like the old man at the corner bar, who knows a lot of interesting things and is happy to share, but every so often veers off into talking about the Illuminati. The digression does not reduce the value of his thoughts, and it is the same here.

James C. Scott teaches political science and anthropology at Yale. He’s a smooth writer and a deep thinker. A while back, he decided to update two lectures on agrarian societies that he had been giving for 20 years. He began studying recent research and — gasp! — realized that significant portions of traditional textbook history had the strong odor of moldy cultural myths. So, a quick update project turned into five years, and resulted in a manuscript that I found to be remarkably stimulating, from cover to cover — Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States.While the human saga is several million years old, and Homo sapiens appeared on the stage maybe 200,000 years ago, the origin myth I was taught began just 10,000 years ago, with domestication and civilization. We were transformed from hungry, dirty, dolts into brilliant philosophers, scientists, and artists, who lived indoors, wore cool clothes, and owned lots of slaves.As a curious animal interested in ecological sustainability, I’m amazed that every other animal species has, for millions of years, lived on this planet without destabilizing the climate, spurring mass extinctions, poisoning everything, and generally beating the out of the planet. These are the unintended consequences of our reckless joyride in a hotrod of turbocharged progress. They define the primary aspects of a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene, the era when tropical primates with huge throbbing brains left permanent scars on the planet.Experts argue about when the Anthropocene began. Did it start with the sorcery of nuclear fission, or the curse of fossil-powered industry? Many point to the domestication of plants and animals, and the birth of civilization. Scott is among the few who say it began with the domestication of fire, which occurred at least 400,000 years ago, sparked by our Homo erectus ancestors. Every other species continues to survive via the original power source, the sun’s wildfire. Plants grow green solar panels that produce the nutrients that keep the fauna alive and happy, a perfectly brilliant design.Imagine waving a magic wand, and eliminating everything in the world made possible by domesticated fire — no metal, no concrete, no plastic, no glowing screens. Would humans still be around? Fire historian Stephen Pyne concluded, “Without fire humanity sinks to a status of near helplessness.” We wouldn’t be able to survive outside the tropics. The plant and animal species that enabled civilization lived north of the tropics. Without domesticated fire, we’d still be wild and free — and far less crowded.Scott focused on southern Mesopotamia, because it was the birthplace of the earliest genuine states. What are states? They are hierarchical societies, with rulers and tax collectors, rooted in a mix of farming and herding. The primary food of almost every early state was wheat, barley, or rice. Taxes were paid with grain, which was easier to harvest, transport, and store than yams or breadfruit. States often had armies, defensive walls, palaces or ritual centers, slaves, and maybe a king or queen.The moldy myths imply that domesticated plants and animals, sedentary communities, and fixed-field agriculture emerged in a close sequence. Wrong! There is scattered evidence of sedentary hunter-gatherers by 12,000 B.C. Domestication began around 9000 B.C. It took at least four thousand years (160 generations!) before agricultural villages appeared, and then another two thousand years before the first states emerged, around 3100 B.C.Moldy myths assume that the Fertile Crescent has been a desert since humans first arrived. Wrong! Southern Mesopotamia used to be wetlands, a cornucopia of wild foods, a paradise for hunters and gatherers. There was so much to eat that it was possible to quit wandering and live in settled communities. “Edible plants included club rush, cattails, water lily, and bulrush. They ate tortoises, fish, mollusks, crustaceans, birds, waterfowl, small mammals, and migrating gazelles.” In a land of abundance, it would have been absolutely stupid to pursue the backbreaking drudgery of agriculture.Moldy myths often give us the “backs-to-the-wall” explanation for the shift to agriculture, which was far more work. Simply, we had run out of new alternatives for feeding a growing mob, while hunting was producing less meat, and wild plants were producing less food. We had no choice! But in the Middle East, there appears to be no firm evidence associating early cultivation with the decline of either game animals or forage.Cultivation seems to have emerged in regions of abundance, not scarcity. Every year, floods deposited silt along the riverbanks, moist fertile soil ready for sowing. So, flood-retreat farming would have required far less toil than tilling fields, while producing useful nutrients. More nutrients enabled further population growth, which eventually pressed the shift to miserable labor-intensive irrigated agriculture.The root of “domestication” is “domus” (the household). In early Mesopotamia, “the domus was a unique and unprecedented concentration of tilled fields, seed and grain stores, people, and domestic animals, all coevolving with consequences no one could have possibly foreseen.” As a result of living on the domus, animals (including humans) were changed, both physically and behaviorally. In this process, wild species became domesticated. Over time, some species became “fully domesticated” — genetically altered, entirely dependent on humans for their survival. Domestication was also about deliberate control over reproduction, which “applied not only to fire, plants, and animals but also to slaves, state subjects, and women in the patriarchal family.”Domesticated sheep have brains 24 percent smaller than their wild ancestors. Pig brains are a third smaller. Protected from predators, regularly fed, with restricted freedom of movement, they became less alert, less anxious, less aggressive — pudgy passive dimwit meatballs. They reached reproductive age sooner, and produced far more offspring.“The multispecies resettlement camp was, then, not only a historic assemblage of mammals in numbers and proximity never previously known, but it was also an assembly of all the bacteria, protozoa, helminthes, and viruses that fed on them.” The domus was a magnet for uninvited guests: fleas, ticks, leeches, mosquitoes, lice, and mites. Unnatural crowds of animals spent their lives walking around in poop, and drinking dirty water. It was a devilishly brilliant incubator for infectious diseases. Humans share a large number of diseases with other domus animals, including poultry (26), rats and mice (32), horses (35), pigs (42), sheep and goats (46), cattle (50), and dogs (65).Other writers have noted that, prior to contact, Native Americans had no epidemic diseases. With very few domesticated animals, they lacked state of the art disease incubators. Scott goes one step further, asserting that prior to the domus, there was little or no epidemic disease in the Old World. “The importance of sedentism and the crowding it allowed can hardly be overestimated. It means that virtually all the infectious diseases due to microorganisms specifically adapted to Homo sapiens came into existence only in the past ten thousand years, many of them perhaps only in the past five thousand.” Thus, the humans that first crossed from Siberia to North America 13,000 years ago were free of disease because little or no infectious disease existed anywhere in the world!Dense monocultures of plants also begged for trouble. “Crops not only are threatened, as are humans, with bacterial, fungal, and viral diseases, but they face a host of predators large and small — snails, slugs, insects, birds, rodents, and other mammals, as well as a large variety of evolving weeds that compete with the cultivar for nutrition, water, light, and space.” Once harvested and stored in the granary, grain could be lost to weevils, rodents, and fungi. The biggest vulnerability of states was that they were almost entirely dependent on a single annual harvest of one or two staple grains. Crops could be wiped out by drought, flood, pests, storm damage, or crop diseases.Mesopotamian life was largely human powered. Workers grew the grain that the tax man hauled away to the plump elites. More workers meant more wealth and power for the big shots. In screw-brained hierarchical cultures (including ours), it’s impossible to have too much wealth. Therefore, peasants and slaves were husbanded like livestock. The diabolical “more is better” disease was devastating. Some believe that monumental walls were built as much for defense as to prevent taxpayers and slaves from escaping to freedom.Early states were vulnerable in many ways, and they frequently collapsed. Collapse sounds like a tragedy. But it could simply mean breaking up into smaller components. Larger was not necessarily better. A drought might cause a state’s population to disperse. For the non-elites, life in a Mesopotamian state could be oppressive and miserable. Sometimes, collapse was a cause for celebration. Yippee!Anyway, the book is fascinating. Readers also learn about the tax game, the vital slave industry, trade networks, deforestation, erosion, soil salinization, irrigation, looting and raiding, mass escapes of workers, the challenges and benefits of being surrounded by large numbers of aggressive nomadic herders, and on and on. It’s an outstanding book!WARNING: The expensive Kindle edition contains numerous charts, maps, and diagrams. When downloaded to the Kindle for PC application (v 1.20.1), most are unreadably small, even on a 24” monitor. Clever nerds can tediously capture the images to another application, expand them, and read them. Strong reading glasses (3.75 lens or higher) also work with a big monitor.

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