My Life Changing Books of 2024

The end of the year is a good opportunity to reflect on the books we've read during 2024 and, perhaps, even books that changed our lives this year. While some may be pleasant or, even, disturbing reads, some may make you look at the world in new and different ways. For me, this came down to two books. A short list, to be certain. But, to me, a meaningful one. What's on your list?

An Immense World by Ed Yong

My wife has been reading Ed Yong since his early days as a blogger, straight through to his days at The Atlantic and beyond. In my first Ed Yong experience with the book Immense World, this pre-eminent science writer explores the topic of animal senses. Not the "what" do animals think, but the "how" they think and, likely, perceive the world based on their biology - be it echo-location of bats or the vast world that a dog experiences through its sense of smell. While not at all a book that is trying, in any way, to persuade someone to become a vegetarian, the perceptions of mammals in the book, their capacity to experience pain and other emotions associated with being a mammal, hit a little too close to me and I came to the conclusion that I no longer wanted pain inflicted on other beings that could experience pain and other emotions when other options are available. And as I reflect upon the year we are about to leave behind, any kind of empathy we can marshal from within and share with any being is good empathy.

The Dawn of Everything - David Graeber & David Wengrow

The Dawn of Everything is, in essence, a re-assessment of human anthropology and archeology. For me, it is the most important book I have read in the 21st Century. It questions the nature of human "progress" being - of necessity - hierarchical in the sense of hunter gatherers turning into agriculturalists, turning into civilization as the default mode for human society. The reality, the authors argue, is that humans co-existed in many different kinds of social order, often defining themselves by what their neighbors were not. For instance, it is often thought that the Agricultural Revolution was an inevitable aspect of the "progress" that led to us. The authors argue that there have been and are, though increasingly less, forms of social organization chosen by different groups of people in what we would call "pre-history". Some were hunter-gatherers, some were nomadic, some were pastoralists, some farmed parts of the year and not others and some permanent settlements adopted the form of farming that we believe gave birth to the first hierarchical, permanent civilizations. Sidenote - or perhaps something to remember while reading and why this alternate perspective is so interesting - is that Graeber was an anarchist. For me, this book functioned as a reminder that when it comes to the past, there's always more where that came from and our interpretations and perspectives can change as we acquire new information. And something that I considered the only history was likely far more diverse and interesting than I might have once thought. It also indicates that human beings can choose different forms of social organization - from the egalitarian to the hierarchical - and that no one way is an inevitability but, often, changes with time in interesting, previously unexpected or known, ways. 

I hope 2024 has been a fulfilling year of reading for you whatever you enjoy reading. Maybe your life was changed by a book this year, maybe you enjoyed yourself thoroughly or experienced a vast range of emotions through one book or many. Whatever the case, may 2025 be a year of great reading for everyone! 

-Chip McAuley, Hopewell Branch