Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
Ratings1,031
Average rating4.2
Great read. This books works fabulously as a good overview about the place of human kind in the ecosystem and how the social structures were built and work. Both from evolutionary and from humane point of view. Personally I really enjoyed the first parts of the book, mostly because I was already familiar with the concepts presented later. The chapters dedicated to summarise the book were very interesting as well as it has shown a somehow new perspective (at least for me) on what actually civilisation and progress means to us.
What I mostly lacked here is a deeper argumentation of the theories claimed by the author. Sometimes one can feel as in more problematic areas he rather tried to omit them and presented as a rather obvious truth.
These, however, are rather minor flaws. To someone who doesn't treat this book as a scientific study but rather popular-science it should prove as a great, informative and entertaining read as it was to myself!
This book twists facts, makes them up, and then completely baseless speculation as fact about the past in order to push the author's story & agenda. There's no evidence for most of the story in the book. For example, the idea that we have any clue about the daily agenda, thoughts, skills, and education of some hominid 2 million years ago or 50,000 years ago is absurd. Facts everywhere are twisted to fit the story, like the history of colonialism which is whitewashed to be seen as a natural consequence of the scientific prowess of the colonizers. Or the fact that racism today is downplayed as cultural rather than based on skin color.
চমৎকার বই। কিছু জিনিস একটু ডিস্টার্বিং হতে পারে তাদের জন্য যারা মর্ডান-পোস্টমডার্ন বা মেডিভ্যাল কিছু ইল্যুশনের ওপর নির্ভরশীল তাদের জীবনযাপনের জন্য।
The implications of the current pace of technology is presented in an interesting way. I kept thinking what would my reaction to such a sort of life would be. There are instances where you begin to question reality, free will and the mere essence of what means to be a human. If we are the dominant species, was it by our choice or it was coded within is, what if we go extinct, are we wholly responsible or does that just mean that our time is up. This book opens up your mind to a lot of questions and for the better.
This was a freaking depressing book, because as a species we have not been good for our planet or other species, unfortunately. I enjoyed learning from it, and it did make me decide to take a serious look at becoming a vegetarian. Also, I would have enjoyed it more if the author seemed less biased against Christianity. Just stated the facts without so much of his opinion thrown in.
It is a reductionist approach to macro-history. Which is both good (providing a nice narative) and bad (leaving out many factors and creating non-existing links).
I enjoyed first half of the book much more than the second half.
Good stuff and makes you think about things such as how we are already a global community in so many ways, how that has happened and will continue to happen. Worth the read if you want to get thinking in big pictures.
This is a fascinating and enlightening book, and for the most part is brilliant. Although I've read about the origins of homo sapiens and human language, I've never thought of it quite as a “cognitive revolution” that separated us from other primates and animals. Still, the early part of the book–the pre-history–is necessarily speculative and is frustrating as a result. Maybe this, maybe that, and if we don't have any idea then what's the point of guessing? Similarly, the end of the book attempts to predict the future, with the same speculative and unsatisfying result. In the middle though . . . wow. Great stuff.
Harari wrote it very well, and I enjoyed reading it.
I liked the fact that the author included his own view. Bias or not, I believe an author should express his personal opinion on the context. It make the book more interesting to read.
Mis à part une dernière partie focalisée sur le présent et visiblement nourri aux articles qu'il voyait passer dans son fil Facebook — Yuval Noah Harari nous offre un tour de piste intéressant sur l'histoire de l'Homme. Si l'écriture fait penser à un de ces documentaires sur lequel on tombe un dimanche pluvieux, les idées, les théories, les révélations évoquées dans ces pages soulèvent de belles interrogations. Il y a quelque chose à tirer de chaque chapitre de ce livre, même si tout est évidemment subjectif et sera moqué dans 50 ans.
A phenomenal read, provided you keep in mind many of the assertions Harari makes are his personal opinions.
Entertaining and thought provoking, but ultimately infotainment, self-righteous, and often sensationalist.
3.5/5
While I don't think it's possible to truly condense the entirety of human history in a single text, this is a good start for anyone looking to fill in the gaps of their history education.
2.5 stars, rounded up. A sweeping, opinionated “God's eye view” on humanity - this book starts strong, loses steam, and is generally less than the sum of its parts. It's also a little bit false advertising, the beginning is SO good that it's a pretty big letdown when the rest of it starts to flounder.
It opens with a fun, insightful look into the homo genus - homo erectus, Neanderthals, Denisovans, and homo sapiens - and evolutionary psychology and basically how we should all be on a paleo diet. I loved learning about the mediocrity of pre-“cognitive revolution” homo sapiens as mid-level hunter/gatherers on the food chain, hovering near hyenas and other scavengers. Haaaaa very humbling!
After we hit the cognitive and agricultural revolutions, and a VERY insightful and fun look at anthropology and homo sapiens's ability to weave elaborate fictions that allow for larger tribes/communities (the fiction of laws, the fiction of justice, the fiction of big gods, and so on), things start to - well - take a turn. A big fat chunk of the middle part of this book should be renamed Imperial Apologetics: Making the Trains Run on Time. I started to lose interest here, and also do various things with my eyeballs: side eye, rolling of eyes, etc. Eventually, I was shouting “CITATION NEEDED, BUSTER” because he was just making sweeping mansplainy generalizations that just screamed “heyo I'm so smart, omg it's amazing”. But I started getting stuck on things - like when he says we should attribute South Asian independence “not just to Mahatma Gandhi but to the British” and how wonderful and peaceful that was, in particular, and how, gosh, there have been zero post-colonial wars. He stuffs this (crazy) argument with a bunch of straw men examples, and I was like, “wtf has this history prof forgotten Partition?!” And what about Pakistan/Bangladesh?!
He wraps the book up with, first, a lot of stuff about how we should count our blessings for living in this WEIRD (Western/educated/industrialized/rich/democratic)-valorizing world since everyone before us died of bubonic plague sores or by getting murdered for land. And then there's a lot of bright eyed stuff about our post-human future - THE SINGULARITY IS NIGH - and so on. I guess an extensive plug for his sequel, Homo Deus.
Okay. So. This is why this book is less than the sum of its parts: I feel like most of these points have been made before, and better, and without such pomp and citation-free self-important provocateuring. Specifically:
- On imperial apologetics and a WEIRD-friendly vast “God's eye view” of history: A Little History of the World by E.H. Gombrich. That one WAY MORE blew my mind about things like Culture and Civilization &c &c
- On big gods and game theory and humans being able to tolerate a big tribe: Big Gods: How Religion Transformed Cooperation and Conflict by Ara Norenzayan
- On our post-human future/the Singularity/cyborgs and DARPA and stuff like that: Andrej Karpathy, this AI researcher out of Stanford and now at Tesla, seems to always be happy to dump ice showers on you with HIGHLY PLAUSIBLE and HIGHLY FREAKY near futures where deep learning has eaten our humanity away. Here you go. Rudy Rucker's Postsingular struck me, I remember, long ago with his plausible and strange ideas of nanotech WiFi ingested into our bodies. Internet of flesh! Also I haven't read it yet, but Nick Bostrom's Superintelligence freaked Elon Musk out so that's something.
- But the evolutionary psychology/homo genus stuff - NOW THAT WAS VERY VERY INTERESTING.
Sincèrement un des livres les plus intéressants qu'il ne m'ait jamais été donné de lire. En 500 pages, Yuval Noah Harari retrace l'intégralité de l'histoire de l'humanité, du berceau de la civilisation à nos jours, chamboulant à peu près tout ce que j'avais pu apprendre en cours d'histoire et de biologie, offrant un regard neuf et incisif sur notre Histoire et notre rapport à notre monde. Le nombre de passages que j'ai surligné dans ce livre est juste hallucinant, tout comme le branle-bas de combat qu'il a mis en 500 pages dans ma population neuronale. Je trouve que l'on devrait mettre ce livre dans les mains de tout le monde tellement il est riche d'enseignements et remet énormément de choses en perspective. Donc foncez vous le procurer et dévorez le, on en discutera avec plaisir !
I loved this book for its very objective take on many subjective matters. It's mind-boggling to think that history, of all things can be a subjective topic. It's even scary when you put it in plain words. In this book author tries hard not to take a side and succeeds in it without making the reader alienated or confused. I don't agree with certain points in this book, but it thankfully leaves enough space for the reader to think over independently and come to his own conclusions.
The book has a structure that's hurried and never lingers on any point for a long time. It's good because it has enough content to fill volumes if elaborated. It skims the surface of the topics it covers and leaves an invite to the interested reader to research in depth about the topics that interest him.
The content is interesting but the way the narrative is weaved is what I enjoyed the most.
I don't even know how to review this book without undermining its brilliance and/or dissuading any potential reader.
Also, this is a popular science/history/all-of-the-humanities-combined book. I do not know enough about the subject to write a detailed and objective review (there is nothing I dislike more than people misleading/misinforming others by making bold and unfounded claims on subjects they are not knowledgeable in).
It's hard to remember on a day to day basis that current life on planet earth is part of a much larger picture. Sapiens constantly expands the reader's perspective in a riveting account. Like a voice whispering “nothing is absolute” at the end of every page. His ability to explain how we (homo sapiens) have found ourselves living in the world we do now, through an open minded, multifaceted approach and in well written prose blew me away. It was no surprise to me that it won a prize for its creativity and originality.
I don't want to refer to common criticisms I encountered while reading other goodreads reviews, partially because I am not an expert in the field (just as many of those people aren't, by the way) and also because no book is perfect. This one addresses huge themes, many of which are controversial (e.g. religion), thus tackling a large and difficult task. Opinions can and should be debated. Maybe I mostly loved this book because I constantly look at the world/life/everything through as openminded a perspective as possible. If you're not feeling openminded, you might want to leave it for later. In my view it's an incredibly intelligent effort to expand the minds of readers, and there is no way for me to convey the effect the book has. You just have to read it.
(P.S. I was finally convinced to read Sapiens after accidentally stumbling across SimonOxfPhys reviewing it on YouTube. More detailed, very enthusiastic).
Interesting rambling discussion of sapiens. How we came to dominate the planet and why? good mix of philosophy, history, archeology.
Sapiens is the most well written, concise, and thought provoking book on the history of mankind I've ever read. Yuval managed to build upon the most fundamental concepts in life and history chapter after chapter in a way that kept the narrative consistent and easy to follow throughout. I can't recommend this book highly enough to friends and family.
Incredible, fascinating narrative about the history of Humankind. A must read for every human. This book should be taught in schools.
It feels sometimes as if you were reading the chapter about humans in Douglas Adams fictional “hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy” - I say this as a compliment.