Sapiens: An In-Depth Look at the History of Humanity

Kimj1234: A very comprehensive guide even for people like me who don't like history I would reconed to anyone yes Sir

United Kingdom on Sep 12, 2023

Michael Rangne: Fantastiskt initierad och välskriven bok om människans utveckling f f a de senaste 70 000 åren. Skulle kunna ha blivit en torr och trist historia, men icke. Man kastas in i en fängslande redogörelse med myriader av spännande fakta och tankar och det går knappt att lägga ifrån sig boken. Den tog världen med storm och har sålts i många miljoner exemplar. Stark rekommendation för alla som vill få en djupare förståelse för hur vi människor är funtade och varifrån vi kommer.

Sweden on Sep 06, 2023

Tirth Patel: I see many people complaining about the wild leaps of logic and the lack of footnotes - but honestly, what did you expect in a 500 page book, not even with small print, that's supposed to give you a summary of all history from the emergence of Homo sapiens to the present day? Personally, I thought the basic idea was terrific: the author has taken it upon himself to defend the Book of Genesis and show you that it's all true. I have seen creationists attempt the same thing and fail miserably, with their pseudo-scientific explanations of why the Earth is actually six thousand years old, how the Flood explains geology, etc. None of this nonsense for clever Dr Harari. He doesn't bother arguing about the places where science has obviously got it right (the Big Bang, plate tectonics, evolution), but takes them as givens. He doesn't get into the tangled reasoning about where a Creator might come into the picture; here, there is none.
Instead, he cuts to the chase and gives you a story that's actually very interesting. About ten thousand years ago, people largely stopped being hunter-gatherers and started being farmers. This is usually presented by modern commentators as a Good Thing....

India on Jul 12, 2023

David Zetland: One of my readers recommended this book, and I enjoyed it a lot. Given its massive success, I am not going to write very much about its content (here's an overview) but give some comments and impressions on Hariri's thinking.

Warning: I made over 300 notes, as Hariri is an elegant and perceptive thinker and writer. Below, I group my comments or quote Hariri by the book's parts.

Although many points are presented as fact, I think of them as informed opinion. In most cases, I agree with Harari's logic, but that agreement dropped as his narrative approached our contemporary times (skip to the bottom). I think that's less due to the presence of more data than the ever-deepening diversity and complexity of our institutions -- trends that Hariri also acknowledges.

Part 1: The cognitive revolution
Humans are born underdeveloped, so they need help growing up. Thus we have strong social potential that can be shaped (language, taste, religion) in many ways.
Our jump to the top of the food chain (due to the advantages of social organization) was sudden. Thus, we lack natural predators or instincts that might limit our exploitation of resources, a problem that's...

United States on Apr 03, 2018

JMaxfield: After reading this book and then reading many of the reviews below I am astounded that so many reviewers have only used less than 50 words! This book covers hundreds of topics and comments on a vast amount of subjects - so just to say the book was good/excellent doesn't mean anything - what points did these people appreciate and were there any points you were uncertain about or disagreed with or thought wrong. Believing everything you read is both dangerous and foolish (especially in this day and age) and we should know better e.g. awareness of fake news/information. Although I enjoyed reading the book because of it's thought provoking questions and analysis of our history as well as the fact that Harari has made the book very accessible through his easy to read style - I did see that his liberal, political correct stance had flaws that should have been obvious to most readers (even if you don't possess any knowledge in the areas covered by the author). The fact that in the first part of the book Harari refers negatively about scientists and archaeologists speculating on the basis of findings and that they will probably never know if these speculations are true - this is fine -...

United Kingdom on Nov 14, 2017

Rahul Rai Khatri: BookReviewsFromHeart @ Blogger

It's quite rarely when you came across a person or a book which just amazes you and a part of it just housed into your mind and brain. By the way , What do know about Humans(us) ? I was taught,like many others, in school that Homo Sapiens is the scientific name for Humans. Homo Sapiens -the species Sapiens(Wise ) of the genus (Homo) and is the only living human species on earth but none of them debriefed us anything about the conditions in which we actually arose . Were there exist only Homo Sapiens or there exist other human species too ? 100,000 years ago,at least, six human species inhabited the earth. Today, there's just one. Us.
And What injected in the minds of kids at a very young age , including me, is that it's the climate which causes the extinction of many animal species . But is it a complete truth ? Few tried to find . Honestly, I didn't but this book answered so many answers to the questions which were not even budded in our brain .
Magnum Opus this book is a wide-ranging and bold work of non-fiction which challenges everything we thought we knew about being human from our thoughts to our actions and even our future ....

India on Mar 28, 2016

L. Huang: High level, thought-provoking ideas, lucid exposition, engaging language, and interesting examples. I would recommend this book to ANYONE.

In addition to reading, I also listened to the audiobook narrated by Derek Perkins - also highly recommended.

The book focuses on "big" history, i.e., macroscopic historical patterns and principles, rather than individual or microscopic historical events and processes. Examples include the three major unification forces of human cultures (money, empires and religions) and the interactions between science, imperialism and capitalism that buttress Western empires' dominion since 1750. Each chapter is organized around these themes, rather than around individual historical regions, eras or institutions (eg, empires and religions) which seems to be the approach of most traditional history textbooks or even university curricula (as judged from for example the course offerings in the History Department of my university: https://classes.cornell.edu/browse/roster/FA15/subject/HIST).

[This paragraph contains some personally thoughts only marginally relevant to the book under review; feel free to skip it] Personally, I am utterly...

United States on Apr 13, 2015