Evolution has been viewed as constant advancement toward a civilized ideal, but also as a directionless process of natural selection. Taking a fresh look at the evidence, Stanford anthropologist Ian Hodder proposes a different theory of evolution and history based on "entanglement," the ever-increasing mutual dependency between humans and things. Surveying cultural and genetic evolution, Hodder reviews such phenomena as the invention of the wheel and the use of Christmas tree lights, to show how entanglement has created webs of human-thing dependency that encircle the world and even limit our responses to global crises.