The Big Ratchet
How Humanity Thrives in the Face of Natural Crisis

The purpose of this book is described as follows in the book’s Prologue:This book is an attempt to reconstruct how we became extraordinary, how human civilization evolved to manipulate nature so much that most people live in cities. Our journey began by living off the plants and animals that nature......more

The subject is interesting and the story of humanity does have some interesting bits that I hadn't fully grasped or pieced together before I read it. That said, I find the perspective very biased. A lot of the instances where the author proclaims "human ingenuity", one could easily say that it was a......more

The Big Ratchet is a 'short history of everything' style retelling of societal inventiveness in the face of environmental constraints. In it, Ruth DeFries suggests that human innovation follows a rough pattern throughout all of history: first a ratchet, then a hatchet, then a pivot. Some innovation......more

The Big Ratchet is a decent, if breezy environmental history of agriculture. DeFries discusses human history in terms of energy, and especially available calories, in terms of a pattern of 'ratchet, hatchet, and pivot'. Some innovation increases the available food supply, a limit is reached, a new i......more

This is a book that had good intentions but fell short of what could have been. Nothing less than the entire span of human history, from the stone age to the present, is covered, with the focus on key breakthroughs that upped the game and took us to the next level, or scale, of development. Fire, la......more