The Old Way
A Story of the First People
by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas
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More Recommenders
CEO of OpenAI
“If you want to learn more about hunter gatherers I strongly recommend The Old Way.”
Source →Recommended by 3 notable people, including Paul Graham and Patrick Collison
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Should I read this?
Recommended by 6 sources and appears in Books Recommended by Paul Graham, Most Recommended Books, and History.
One of our most influential anthropologists reevaluates her long and illustrious career by returning to her rootsand the roots of life as we know it.When Elizabeth Marshall Thomas first arrived in Africa to live among the Kalahari San, or bushmen, it was 1950, she was nineteen years old, and these last surviving huntergatherers were living as hu...
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Why recommended
Recommended by 6 sources and appears in Books Recommended by Paul Graham, Most Recommended Books, and History.
Recommended by notable people
People and public figures who have recommended this book.
Recommendation Signals
Recommendation proof is sourced from public posts, interviews, reading lists, and cited references.
Paul Graham
Co-founder of Y Combinator; essayist
“If you want to learn more about hunter gatherers I strongly recommend The Old Way.”
Appears In
Not sure if this is the right fit?
Consider Accidental Presidents by Jared Cohen. Recommended by 10 sources.
“Accidental Presidents offers eight narrative portraits of men who succeeded to the U.S. presidency without election, using anecdote-rich scenes and readable context to show how personality and circumstance interact with office power. It’s strongest as a set of self-contained stories that make succession stakes concrete for non-specialist readers; it does not prioritize dense archival argument or exhaustive methodology, so expect some interpretive generalizations and repeated themes across cases. Use it for fast historical orientation rather than scholarly deep-dives.”
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Each recommendation is collected from a public source — interviews, articles, or curated lists — and linked to its original URL. Books with many verifiable recommendations from respected people rank higher.