Series: Great Transformations

Humanity has precipitated a planetary crisis of resource consumption—a crisis of stuff. So ingrained is our stuff-centric view that we can barely imagine a way out beyond substituting a new portmanteau of material things for the one we have today. In The Human Scaffold, anthropologist Josh Berson offers a new theory of adaptation to environmental change. Drawing on niche construction,...

In this succinct yet ample work, Zhao Tingyang, one of China’s most distinguished intellectuals, provides a profoundly original philosophical interpretation of China’s story and also develops a Chinese worldview for the future. Over the past few decades, the question Where did China come from? has absorbed the thoughts of many of China's best historians. Zhao, keenly aware of the persistent...