By Steppe, Desert, and Ocean
By Steppe, Desert, and Ocean is nothing less than the story of how humans first started building the globalized world we know today. Set on a huge continental stage, from Europe to China, it is a tale covering over 10,000 years, from the origins of farming around 9000 BC to the expansion of the Mongols in the thirteenth century AD. An unashamedly "big history", it charts the development of European, Near Eastern, and Chinese civilizations and the growing links between them by way of the Indian Ocean, the silk Roads, and the great steppe corridor (which crucially allowed horse riders to travel from Mongolia to the Great Hungarian Plain within a year). Along the way, it is also the story of the rise and fall of empires, the development of maritime trade, and the shattering impact of predatory nomads on their urban neighbours. Above all, as this immense historical panorama unfolds, we begin to see in clearer focus those basic underlying factors--the acquisitive nature of humanity, the differing environments in which people live, and the dislocating effect of even slight climatic variation--which have driven change throughout the ages, and which help us better understand our world today.
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- One useful first step in becoming a better writer - in particular if your subject is complex - is to to delete your Twitter account and never look at another Twitter thread. Character limits kill creativity and complexity.
The presentation does leave out one very necessary requirement for becoming a good-to-great writer: you have to do a lot of reading. If you're going to write about a complex scientific or technical subject, you should have some examples in mind of great texts that you've read. What did other writers do that you liked or that stuck with you? Equally true, what are some really bad examples, some things to avoid?
For example, here's what I think is an excellent popular history book, and if I ever wrote something with a historical bent, I'd flip though it first: "By Steppe, Desert, and Ocean: The Birth of Eurasia" by Barry Cunliffe
https://www.amazon.com/Steppe-Desert-Ocean-Birth-Eurasia/dp/...
The point about Twitter is really this: you have to develop the skill of composing a paragraph as a coherent entity in order to become a decent writer, and Twitter doesn't allow for paragraphs, just sentences (and short ones at that). Paragraphs should have an internal cohesion to help the reader absorb the concept being presented. Once you have that, you can start chaining paragraphs together, reordering the sequence of paragraphs, with the goal of constructing a path that the reader can follow through the whole essay or chapter. Getting the order right is important for complex topics, as point D might rely on a good understanding of points A and B, and so on. Your goal should be to make the reader feel smart.
Of course that's just advice for non-fiction writing; if you're doing fiction or poetry basically anything goes. The public might like it or hate it, but the literary critics can safely be ignored.
- I'm part-way through "By Steppe, Desert, and Ocean: The Birth of Eurasia" [0] and it does a fantastic job of illustrating the significance of markets in the ancient world. One tidbit that struck me as particularly interesting was that the appearance of the earliest civilizations in the near east demanded resources from other areas, notably the caucuses and beyond, which caused the emergence of more advanced civilizations in those regions as well--and similarly, when a given near-east civilization declined or collapsed, the satellite civilization declined or collapsed as well. In general, I'm always surprised that enormous markets existed before nation states, animal husbandry, before metallurgy, and even before agriculture itself. People were trading obsidian or other resources back into the stone age. I guess I always thought of widespread trade networks as a later development--something that depended upon (not preceded) the existence of agriculture, metallurgy, or nation states.
[0]: https://www.amazon.com/Steppe-Desert-Ocean-Birth-Eurasia/dp/...
- If you think they are about questions relevant centuries ago, I'd really like to know what you think the questions are.
Many of the "classics" of classic literature (no pun intended) talk about questions that are perpetually relevant, and the same goes for lots of things that fall under history and philosophy.
I don't debate there's a lot of garbage out there that falls under "it's old, so we'll teach it", but I can assure you that the vast majority does speak about relevant topics. And like in SF, the ones that endure are the ones that speak most clearly.
In general, all stories teach about empathy - how can I put myself in somebody else's shoes. If you found a better way to learn that via SF, more power to you. The classics are still relevant because they provide the foundation upon all this is built, and so they become important once you discuss things in a wider circle. (E.g. I might like fantasy, and not have a solid enough grounding in SF. We need to find some common ground. Via acclamation, the world has picked literature/history/philosophy as that common ground)
And so I'd encourage you to maybe go out and give some of it a try :)
If you care for recommendations: For philosophy, I recommend "What does it all mean" by Thomas Nagel. I don't have a great recommendation for History - I like "By Steppe, Desert and Ocean", but it's incomplete & somewhat eurocentric. True world history in a single book is probably asking a bit much. Same goes for literature, but even more so - it's really a matter of taste. I adore "The Master and Margarita", but beware, it's weird :) Grapes of Wrath is a moving and v. relevant one. The Illiad is spectacular, but I only know German translations, never read it in English.
