By the time the written records of Mesopotamia and Egypt begin to turn up in number, the climaxes there are well under way. To understand the beginnings of the climaxes, and the real beginnings of the second act itself, we are thrown back on prehistoric archeology. And this is as true for China, India, Middle America, and the Andes, as it is for the Near East. There are lessons to be learned from all of man’s past, not simply lessons of how to fight battles or win peace conferences, but of how human society evolves from one stage to another. Many of these lessons can only be looked for in the prehistoric past. So far, we have only made a beginning. There is much still to do, and many gaps in the story are yet to be filled. The prehistorian’s job is to find the evidence, to fill the gaps, and to discover the lessons men have learned in the past. As I see it, this is not only an exciting but a very practical goal for which to strive. List of Books BOOKS OF GENERAL INTEREST (Chosen from a variety of the increasingly useful list of cheap paperbound books.) Childe, V. Gordon _What Happened in History._ 1954. Penguin. _Man Makes Himself._ 1955. Mentor. _The Prehistory of European Society._ 1958. Penguin. Dunn, L. C., and Dobzhansky, Th. _Heredity, Race, and Society._ 1952. Mentor. Frankfort, Henri, Frankfort, H. A., Jacobsen, Thorkild, and Wilson, John A. _Before Philosophy._ 1954. Penguin. Simpson, George G. _The Meaning of Evolution._ 1955. Mentor. Wheeler, Sir Mortimer _Archaeology from the Earth._ 1956. Penguin. GEOCHRONOLOGY AND THE ICE AGE (Two general books. Some Pleistocene geologists disagree with Zeuner’s interpretation of the dating evidence, but their points of view appear in professional journals, in articles too cumbersome to list here.) Flint, R. F. _Glacial Geology and the Pleistocene Epoch._ 1947. John Wiley and Sons. Zeuner, F. E. _Dating the Past._ 1952 (3rd ed.). Methuen and Co. FOSSIL MEN AND RACE (The points of view of physical anthropologists and human paleontologists are changing very quickly. Two of the different points of view are listed here.) Clark, W. E. Le Gros _History of the Primates._ 1956 (5th ed.). British Museum (Natural History). (Also in Phoenix edition, 1957.) Howells, W. W. _Mankind So Far._ 1944. Doubleday, Doran. GENERAL ANTHROPOLOGY (These are standard texts not absolutely up to date in every detail, or interpretative essays concerned with cultural change through time as well as in space.) Kroeber, A. L. _Anthropology._ 1948. Harcourt, Brace. Linton, Ralph _The Tree of Culture._ 1955. Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Redfield, Robert _The Primitive World and Its Transformations._ 1953. Cornell University Press. Steward, Julian H. _Theory of Culture Change._ 1955. University of Illinois Press. White, Leslie _The Science of Culture._ 1949. Farrar, Strauss.