rafacolog's review against another edition

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informative reflective medium-paced

3.0


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keishac13's review against another edition

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challenging informative reflective slow-paced

4.5


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scifipunk's review against another edition

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challenging informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

5.0

This book was a very informative and yet surprisingly entertaining recap of literally, the history of humankind as modern scientists understand it.
There is a lot of information in there, but the lively style makes it easy to read regardless.
I enjoyed that Harari manages to approach complicated issues from multiple perspectives and explains controversies among scientists very well. All opinions given are explained, and the author interestingly does not leave out issues he does not have a satisfying answer or explanation for (yet), but rather admits to that and moves on.
I also noticed that the translator localized all examples or comparisons, and did so very well.
This is one of the books that I see myself re-reading over and over in the future, and I truly wish it had been around when I was a child.

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burnt_milk's review against another edition

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challenging informative reflective sad medium-paced

3.75

Overall a really interesting read with a lot to say about our place in the world and especially what we deem "progress". However there was such a rudimentary view of gender even for 2014 - no acknowledgement of intersex people, and while there is some talk about gender roles and differentiating gender from sex, the author avoids talking about trans people, and clumsily uses "he or she" for every example.
I've read in other reviews that there are also a few factual inaccuracies in the text.

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lanid's review against another edition

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challenging informative reflective

5.0


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yellow_star's review against another edition

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informative medium-paced

2.0

This is a book by an asshole. Warning: author has lots of prejudices, strongly classist.

It should be a good overview of humanity's history, and parts of it are that, but there's constant butt ins from the author being an r/iamverysmart type prick. One example of many: "[humans developed more and more specialized niches] including niches for imbeciles like water carriers or factory workers." What kind of classist asshole writes that because someone is in the bottom of a class organization and can only get low paying jobs they themselves are a brain dead idiot?!? Who tries to make a fact based argument that classism and other types of prejudice are how superior genes work out and arrange themselves in a society besides a prejudiced jerk? That's just one example, the author gleefully throws in many other attacks against many other groups and ideologies that don't really connect with or build on the academic content of the book and are mainly just there to pretend there's a factual basis for being an asshole. There are a few parts where the author just innocently covers prejudice as it pertains to human history which is totally a valid thing to have a lot of in a book about human history, but they still add in their personal hateful opinions where it adds nothing and isn't pertinent to what is being learned. I still gave it 2 stars because there's some actual facts in there and the book is well organized but I bet that's to the credit of the editor more than this jerk author. What kind of person tries to pretend there are factual arguments supporting imperialism and classism and racism as helping our species thrive? The author does not differentiate between established facts and his own personal theories, I would guess that is because of an oversized ego thinking all of his own personal theories and opinions are equal to established facts. Maybe all the good reviews of this popular book are just people being blinded by the illusion of facts supporting prejudice in this to not see it's just the author's own barely disguised hatefulness? I've never read such a bad popular book. There have to be other books that are a summary of human history with a more reliable narrator though.

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karenaerts's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

5.0


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