Review of Walter Scheidel,
Escape from Rome: The Failure of Empire and the Road to Prosperity (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019)
The Roman Empire is often presented as the fabric of Western civilization. The languages, laws, religion, mores, and implements of the Western political imaginary come in large part, in one way or another, from Rome. The Roman Empire has been rebooted time and again by invaders and latecomers, from the Ostrogoths to Charlemagne to Mussolini; transferred (in reality or in rhetoric) to Byzantine, to Moscow, to the Habsburgs, and even to Washington, DC; and recycled endlessly through books, art, movies, and plays. Whenever Westerners think of civilizational wellsprings, they usually think of togas and parapets and conquering legions and gladiators and mad emperors. The West, in nub, is Rome.
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The Independent Publishers Guild is holding two days of informational and networking events in March, as world publishing finds itself without its usual spring events.
Some paid packages offered to publishers in the IPG International Publishers Forum include a digital exhibitor booth in the program’s interactive environment. Image: IPG
March 9 and 10
While much of the conversation around the world book business’ trade shows and book fairs this year concerns what’s going forward and in physical or digital modes the UK’s Independent Publishers Guild (IPG) is staging a new online event, its International Publishers Forum, this spring.
Set for March 9 and 10, the event corresponds closely to what would have been London Book Fair’s dates, with the book fair now set for June 19 to July 1 in what’s hoped can be a physical format.
The Descent of Man got right and wrong about human evolution.
From natural selection to sexual selection
Originally published in two volumes,
The Descent of Man covered diverse aspects of animal and human animal life, ranging from comparative anatomy to mental faculties, the ability to use reason, morality, memory and imagination, or how animals choose to have sex and with whom or what. Darwin proposed that sexual selection was instrumental in explaining the origin of what he called human races and cultural progress, writes Browne.
He argued that sexual selection explained why humans had broken off into different racial groups. Skin color and hair were important indicators. But according to Darwin, writes Browne, sexual selection among humans would also affect mental traits such as intelligence and maternal love […] .
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