Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari

My rating:

Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari just blew my mind!

In this engaging book about history, using a satellite world-wide perspective, Harari briefly and broadly explains the history of Homo Sapiens going through 3 major revolutions: the cognitive revolution, the agricultural revolution, and the scientific revolution.

During the cognitive revolution, Homo Sapiens acquires the ability to tell stories, understand, and believe in them. In fact, we believe in these stories so willingly, that we devote a huge amount of time to them, and they now form the cornerstone of local and world-wide cooperation: money, economy, religion, ideology, culture, work, consumerism, even the stock exchange, global time zones, or defending values like liberty and equality.

What makes this book particularly interesting aren’t just the facts and figures - it’s the author’s ability to challenge the reader, and reveal history in thought-provoking ways.

For instance: was the agricultural revolution a good thing? How about Empires? What’s the difference between religion and ideology? Did we cultivate nature or did it domesticate us? What about the capitalist creed? Nuclear weapons? And how and why did Homo Sapiens become the deadliest of the animal kingdom? And, finally, do we know where we want to head in a world where the ‘Gilgamesh project’ is holding fast?

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Being mystifyingly hopeless with history, it’s a miracle I made it through this non-fiction book at all. I was very pleasantly surprised: it made for an easy read, with lots of examples, and I kicked myself for not picking it up sooner! Granted the author’s opinions might make readers uncomfortable at times, but that’s all part of the fun with this book.

This is my second big book of the #BigSummerChallenge hosted by Sue Jackson on Book By Book - and no regrets whatsoever!

Loved it, and definitely recommend.

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