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Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
Historian Yuval Noah Harari surveys the history of Homo sapiens from the Stone Age to the present, organized around the cognitive, agricultural and scientific revolutions. He argues that shared fictions such as money, religion and nations allowed humans to cooperate at enormous scale.
- Release Date
- 2017
- Length
- 543 pages
- Publisher
- Kinneret, Zmora-Bitan, Dvir
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Our Review
About the book
Historian Yuval Noah Harari surveys the history of Homo sapiens from the Stone Age to the present, organized around the cognitive, agricultural and scientific revolutions. He argues that shared fictions such as money, religion and nations allowed humans to cooperate at enormous scale.
Our review
Big-history storytelling at its most confident and entertaining, though it sometimes trades nuance for a good line.
Harari is a superb popularizer. His central idea, that humans conquered the planet by believing collectively in things that exist only in our heads, is clarifying and fun to argue with. The chapters on the agricultural revolution as a bargain that went bad for individuals, and on money as the most universal trust system ever built, are provocative in the best way. He writes with wit and covers a dizzying sweep without losing the reader.
Speed comes at a cost. Specialists in anthropology, archaeology and history have criticized sweeping claims that rest on thin or contested evidence, and Harari often states speculation with the same certainty as established fact. His later chapters on happiness and the future drift from history into opinion. Read it as a brilliant, opinionated essay on the human story, and look elsewhere for the scholarly details.
What we loved
- A memorable organizing idea about shared fictions
- Witty, highly readable prose
- An astonishing sweep in one volume
Keep in mind
- Sweeping claims sometimes outpace the evidence
- Later chapters become speculative and opinionated
Read it if you like
Readers who enjoyed Guns, Germs, and Steel, The Dawn of Everything or A Short History of Nearly Everything.
The verdict
A stimulating big-picture history that’s great for sparking arguments. Enjoy the ride and double-check the details.