My Review 4/5

Great book. I cannot do it justice with the below takeaways.

Honestly it sneaked up on me that it was also a commentary book about how little our biology relates to our current social order. The first 1/3 of the book is very good, but once you get to the post-modern historical era brace yourself for lots of skimming and/or sweeping judgments on humanity.

Humans have relatives: Neanderthals and Erect-us that died out/purged?
Humans have destroyed every ecology it’s touched

Traversing through the three revolutions: Cognitive, Agriculture, Scientific/Technology, Sapiens have shaped the world with the one true revolution. Being able to lie/tell about a fantasy that isn’t there.

These religions permeate all aspects of our culture. The shared myths allow us to extend our network beyond the ‘tribe’ onto the whole world.

The book ends depressingly enough with one of three outcomes
1. ecological/nuclear disaster
2. transform into cyber beings
3. AI takes over the world
4. Genetic engineering takes over the world

Date Read

2017/10/24

Date Added

2017/10/04

Goodreads book information

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25004163

Bookshelves: history, psychology, read-again

Author’s Note

Initial md Generated using https://github.com/jsr6720/goodreads-csv-to-md

Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Derek Perkins Tantor Audio 2015 (Audiobook)1

Significant revisions

tags: 2017, book, review, Harari, history, psychology, read-again

  • Apr 22nd, 2024 Converted to jekyll markdown format and copied to personal site
  • Oct 24th, 2017 Originally published on goodreads

EOF/Footnotes

  1. ISBN: =”” ↩