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A review by cinchona
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
4.0
The first chapter(s) are strong, and present an intensely interesting story of human evolution. I definitely recommend that bit to every reader--thinking about different hominid ancestors coexisting really sparks the imagination. Good job putting the best bit at the front.
The rest of the book is a broad, shallow survey of the history of humans, grouped into different periods (the agricultural revolution, the industrial revolution, etc). The author is neither trying to develop a comprehensive, well-supported thesis, nor is he trying to give an impartial account of the history of humans. Instead, he skates swiftly through history, sharing his opinions on a diverse variety of topics, and trying to construct a picture of humanity at such a distance that you can just barely glimpse all of it at once. His writing is clear, not particularly flowery or academic.
For what it's designed to be, I think Harari's book is successful, and I'm glad to have read it. Some of his opinions are in line with my own, others I think are totally off-base, but this book was clearly not intended to put forth and exhaustively support its claims. Instead, it's a sampling of big ideas, and I appreciate that some interpretations were new to me, and interesting. Overall, the length dragged this down a bit--it's hard to breeze over dozens of ideas without touching down for hundreds and hundreds of pages--but most chapters brought forth at least one point that was worth jotting down for me to think about later. I also have a weakness for books directed at the layperson that bring science and history/social science together!
The rest of the book is a broad, shallow survey of the history of humans, grouped into different periods (the agricultural revolution, the industrial revolution, etc). The author is neither trying to develop a comprehensive, well-supported thesis, nor is he trying to give an impartial account of the history of humans. Instead, he skates swiftly through history, sharing his opinions on a diverse variety of topics, and trying to construct a picture of humanity at such a distance that you can just barely glimpse all of it at once. His writing is clear, not particularly flowery or academic.
For what it's designed to be, I think Harari's book is successful, and I'm glad to have read it. Some of his opinions are in line with my own, others I think are totally off-base, but this book was clearly not intended to put forth and exhaustively support its claims. Instead, it's a sampling of big ideas, and I appreciate that some interpretations were new to me, and interesting. Overall, the length dragged this down a bit--it's hard to breeze over dozens of ideas without touching down for hundreds and hundreds of pages--but most chapters brought forth at least one point that was worth jotting down for me to think about later. I also have a weakness for books directed at the layperson that bring science and history/social science together!