What can we learn from traditional societies that can make the world a better place for all of us? Most of us take for granted the features of our modern society, from air travel and telecommunications to literacy and obesity. Yet for nearly all of its six million years of existence, human society had none of these things. Compared to our primitive ancestors the societal lifestyle has been altered drastically yet we can glimpse much of our former lifestyle in those largely traditional societies still or recently in existence. Diamond doesn’t romanticize traditional societies but finds solutions to universal human problems such as dispute resolution, risk, and physical fitness. The World Until Yesterday provides a mesmerizing firsthand picture of the human past as it had been for millions of years—a past that has mostly vanished—and considers what the differences between that past and our present mean for our lives today.