My complaints about the Dawn of Everything

As you can hopefully tell from these notes, I was deeply inspired by the Dawn of Everything.

At the same time, I was also deeply frustrated by it.

Unfortunately, The Dawn of Everything is unkind to readers.

It is poorly written, disorganized, and whiney.

Poorly written

Like many academic authors, the Davids seem afraid of periods.

They cram too many ideas into long sentences, break those ideas up with distracting parentheticals, and confound the reader with unnecessarily erudite language.

Disorganized

The book is full of digressions.

The Davids do apologize for the constant interruptions. But if they knew to apologize, that means they knew they were making things hard on the reader.

As a substitute for logical organization, the Davids provide frequent and tedious roadmap paragraphs. Unfortunately, these roadmaps are ineffectively broad. Rather than connecting the details or guiding a way forward, they tend to repeat the same big picture conclusions.

Whiney

One of those frequently repeated points is something like:

Mainstream academics are stupid and lazy.

This academic bickering is boring and confusing. Reading the book often felt like having one of those awful conversation with a friend who's complaining about people you don't know. You might sympathize at first, but the more they complain, the less you trust them.

This bickering also undermined one of the Davids' other frequently repeated points: that they are merely summarizing recent academic research.

Still Worth Reading

That said, the book is full of wonderful stories and insights. If you have the time and patience, it's worth reading.