Summary of Nonzero, by Robert Wright

(author of The Moral Animal)

• Introduction: The Storm Before the Calm

• Part I - A Brief History of Mankind

• Chapter One - The Ladder of Cultural Evolution
• Chapter Two - The Way We Were
• Chapter Three - Add Technology and Bake For Five Millennia
• Chapter Four - The Invisible Brain
• Chapter Five - War - What Is It Good For?
• Chapter Six - The Inevitability of Agriculture
• Chapter Seven - The Age of Chiefdoms
• Chapter Eight - The Second Information Revolution
• Chapter Nine - Civilization And So On
• Chapter Ten - Our Friends the Barbarians
• Chapter Eleven - Dark Ages
• Chapter Twelve - The Inscrutable Orient
• Chapter Thirteen - Modern Times
• Chapter Fourteen - And Here We Are
• Chapter Fifteen - New World Order
• Chapter Sixteen - Degrees of Freedom

• Part II - A Brief History of Organic Life

• Chapter Seventeen - The Cosmic Context
• Chapter Eighteen - The Rise of Biological Non-zero-sumness
• Chapter Nineteen - Why Life Is So Complex
• Chapter Twenty - The Last Adaptation

• Part III - From Here To Eternity

• Chapter Twenty-one - Non-crazy Questions
• Chapter Twenty-two - You Call This a God?