I am not particularly interested in psychoanalytic theory, yet, I was intrigued by the overlap with anthropological and political insights that Sagan might develop. I found the descriptions of complex societies fascinating. In fact, only specific, complex societies offer a possibility of eliminating tyranny. Eli Sagan, in his At the Dawn of Tyranny, draws from what he describes as "complex societies," i.e., pre-literate states, such as the Buganda of what is today Uganda, and pre-Europeanized Polynesian societies. No matter what advances were made by Greece or Mohammed, or any number of states from countless places and periods, Sagan states: "It is only with the emergence of democratic political forms that the eradication of various forms of oppression has become an ideal and a possibility of society. . . . Somehow, in only one part of the world--in Western Europe--deep within tyrannical society, the forms developed that made democratic life possible" (p. 297).