A review by worm_food
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari

3.0

Some takes were better than I was expecting, others more boring than they should've been. My main gripe w it is that it attempts to be centrist about things that would actually benefit from having their author admit he's biased one way or another. Don't get me wrong, I'm not insane, I do know that things about our history as a species are objectively true, and not just about our biology, but about money, religion, imperialism, conflict. There's that ancient greek text also that says that the duty of the historian is to be as objective as possible, something that is akin to sacred duty - and it's clear that this is what this book tries to do. I do think that we ought to know more than our ancestors by this point though and just admit that, when a feat like this compilation of history is attempted, bias will creep in. For me, it is much more valuable to be mindful of that bias and address it, but write thru it anyway, than to pretend it doesn't exist. I don't know! This might've made the book worse I guess, and I will say that it was interesting after the biology of evolution was covered (I found these chapters too simple and thus a bit boring, my own bias here). Anyway, not too mad about it, and for a book of its length it manages to not repeat itself much.