At the Dawn of Tyranny The Origins of Individualism, Political Oppression, and the State by Sagan, Eli - 1986

New York: Alfred A Knopf. 1985. First Edition. Hardcover. 0394539222 . Very Good in Very Good dust jacket; DJ is worn at edges. ; Looks at early societies in Africa and Polynesia, traces the development of chieftains and kings, and examines the nature of cruelty, tyranny, and justice. ; B&W Illustrations; 420 pages .

London: Faber and Faber. Very Good/Very Good. 1985. First Edition. Hard Cover. 8vo 0571138225 Dust jacket unclipped.Jacket design by Pentagram. Green cloth with red titling on spine. No ownership marks. 421 pages clean and tight. At the Dawn of Tyranny is an original and provocative work of popular anthropology that explores one of the central problems of human existence: the origins of political tyranny. Eli Sagan uses the accounts of such nineteenth-century explorers as Stanley, Speke and Cook to analyse three cultures that these men found: Buganda, Hawaiian, and the Tahitian. In these societies he found authoritarian monarchs, an aristocratic social structure, a complete legal system, a permanent army, bards and priests. Sagan looks fbr ways to understand how the confining circle of the primitive kinship system was broken so that the course of civilization as we know it could begin, and what price was paid for this advance. He links what happened in those early cultures to current… Read More

London-Boston, Faber & Faber. 1985. Original publishers gray paper covered boards, red title spine, pictorial dustjacket, large 8vo: xxiv, 420pp., [ij], illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. Fine copy. Sagan uses the accounts of nineteenth-century explorers as Stanley, Speke and Cook to explore one of the central problems of human existence: the origins of political tyranny in societies found in Hawaii and Tahiti, and Buganda.