Keeping Together in Time: Dance and Drill in Human History

William H. McNeill pursues the possibility that co-ordinated rhythmic movement and the shared feelings it evokes has been a powerful force in holding human groups together. As he has done for historical phenomena as diverse as warfare, plague, and the pursuit of power, McNeill brings a breadth and depth of knowledge to his study of dance and drill in human history. He maintains that people who move together to the same beat tend to bond and thus that communal dance and drill alter human feelings, he envisages dance as a shaper of evolution, a perpetually sustainable and sustaining resource.