Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

This one took me a while to read because Jacob and I started as a “read out loud on road trips” book, but I ended up finishing it solo. I also feel a weird and complicated attachment to it, because my dad read almost exclusively non-fiction, and this was the next book on his reading list when he died. Anyway! I loved the first half of the book much more than the second, completely related to content. Hariri summarizes the origins of humanity in sweeping early chapters that feel dazzling, the way you want the best intro courses in college to feel. He excels at synthesizing huge swaths of information punctuated by witty asides, and it's just a fun read. The second half of the book, especially the fourth part, however, has chapters on science and empire, capitalism, industry, etc., and thus the tour continues with the various ways we have more recently exploited each other, other animals, and the earth itself at a scale never before seen. I took some solace in Hariri's obvious distaste for the current situation: the book ends with the question, “Is there anything more dangerous than dissatisfied and irresponsible gods who don't know what they want?” I sometimes hear people talk about the challenges humanity faces now as just another iteration of the challenges humanity has always faced. If there's anything Sapiens makes clear, however, it's that our ability to wreak havoc quickly is unprecedented in our history, and our now-vastly-interconnected species means that such havoc can spin out exponentially quickly, likely far faster than our ability to reverse course (ahem see climate change and nuclear war). I think the importance of reflecting on this reality is more important than whether I “liked” the book.