Lost Worlds - by Patrick Wyman (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

The creator of the hit podcast Tides of History offers a new look at humanity's deep past, showing us how our world was built not by inevitability, but by trial and error on a global scale.

There's a familiar story about us humans: we went from hunting and gathering to farming, wandering bands to villages and cities, clans and chieftains to states and kings. But Lost Worlds offers a new narrative of humanity's deep history. Here beloved podcast host Patrick Wyman focuses on the 10,000-year span between the end of the Ice Age and the decline of the Bronze Age--the period when civilization as we understand it emerged, introducing social hierarchies, urbanism, complex political organizations, and the written word.

But instead of being an arc of progress, this period of immense change was not linear; it was littered with fits and false starts, failures, disasters, and the complete collapse of complex societies. With the recent explosion in available archaeological evidence, including ancient human DNA, we can now understand long-past people in unprecedented detail. By focusing on lost worlds of individuals and societies, we see that to be human is to try and fail. But it is also to endure.

In this nuanced retelling, human progress is no longer a straight march from caves to cities: Farming didn't always replace foraging, villages didn't automatically spark agriculture, and cities didn't necessitate rigid hierarchies. For thousands of years, humans merely improvised. By the end of the Bronze Age, the world had become unrecognizable: mammoths and giant sloths replaced by cattle and sheep, scattered nomadic bands replaced by millions living in cities, and farming on nearly every continent. Wyman argues that the rise of states and steady food production wasn't inevitable, but rather, the outcome of countless choices that reshaped the planet and made us who we are today.

Sweeping, accessible, and filled with colorful detail, Lost Worlds is the story of how humanity built the world we live in--not by destiny, but by experiment.

Review Quotes

"Whip-smart and crackling with life, The Verge shines brilliant new light on the era when the world as we know it was made. The turn of the Middle Ages into the early modern age was an exciting, confounding, sometimes terrifying time, revolutionary in almost every way. And Patrick Wyman is the perfect guide to its convulsions: he has a scholar's brain but a raconteur's touch for finding humanity in even the most complex story. This is popular history as it should be written, and a terrific debut from a very accomplished writer." - Dan Jones, New York Times bestselling author of The Plantagenets and The Templars, on The Verge
"Extraordinary--The Verge deftly illustrates how a crucial forty-year takeoff period led Europe to world domination." - Roger Crowley, New York Times bestselling author of Empires of the Sea and The Accursed Tower, on The Verge
"In The Verge, Patrick Wyman expertly weaves the story of the birth of modernity. With a masterful gift for storytelling, Wyman connects fascinating individual lives to the massive social changes they unleashed, making The Verge as engrossing as it is informative. Wyman takes us from fleets in the Atlantic, to silver mines in Hungary, to wool traders in England, to the richest banks in Europe, clearly illustrating the sophisticated economic, technological, and political forces driving Europe towards global domination. The Verge is a must read for anyone who wants to understand the origins of the modern world." - Mike Duncan, New York Times bestselling author of The Storm Before the Storm, on The Verge
"If you want to understand why the world is the way it is today, you need to understand the events that took place in Western Europe during the 16th century. The Verge provides a glimpse into the world as it was 500 years ago, with a freshness and vivacity that can only come from someone with an intimate knowledge of how to write about both history and combat. Wyman uses the lives of key people--a queen, a colonizer, a banker, a knight--to introduce readers to the profound economic, political, technological, and social developments that provoked the development of the modern world. The Verge is an accessible and fascinating glimpse into the lives and thoughts of people who transformed the world." - Jennifer Raff, assistant professor of anthropology and author of Origin, on The Verge
"The Verge is as engaging as it is erudite, a grand tour of the economic and cultural upheavals that shaped the modern world." - Zachary D. Carter, New York Times bestselling author of The Price of Peace, on The Verge
"How did Europe go from a global backwater in the late Middle Ages to global dominance in the 19th century? In this dexterous account, Patrick Wyman literally follows the money, revealing how a resource-scarce corner of the world was forced in the late 15th century to develop innovative institutions and practices to pool, lend, and transfer capital, enabling everything from Columbus's voyages to the ability to wage total war across the continent and around the world." - Colin Woodard, New York Times bestselling author of American Nations and Union, on The Verge