Sapiens a Brief History of Humankind

Rating: 5 of 5

Sapiens is one of the few books I’ve read twice. I actually read it first in 2018 and just re-read it this last month.

Sapiens really helped me understand my fellow human better. Yuval Harari’s description of inter-subjective fictions and how they shape how people interact was fascinating to me. Before reading Sapiens I found it easy to discount peoples opinions when they engaged in what I felt was “fantastical thinking”. Sapiens helped me understand WHY people did this and helped expose a lot of my own myths too me.

I do have a few criticisms of Yuvals book. I think Yuval is a much better analyst of the past then he is a predictor of the future. I think Yuval would agree with this and he sometimes points out the future looking sections of the book are more to “inspire thoughts” then to make predictions. But when reading these sections I couldn’t help but feel that Yuval would be better off sometimes staying more to what he knows. My second criticism is that Yuval has a minor bias towards buddhism and has strong opinions on animal rights. While these views do not detract much from the book, I do feel like its an area where Yuvals bias peeks through. Having been involved in “industrial agriculture” I understand Yuvals issues but I don’t think things are as exactly as he describes them. This isn’t to say that I feel that his views on animal rights and cruelty are wrong. Rather that I feel that the ways he highlights them do not paint a complete picture of the situation.

Yuvals narrative of history is engaging and entertaining and importantly very easy to read. He regularly juxtaposes social constructions to make interesting points and compelling arguments. I find Sapiens to be information dense book and I don’t think my short review is adequate to describe its contents. I strongly recommend this book to anyone interested in history and perhaps getting some answers to Why do people believe what they do?