Sapiens (Harari)

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
(Yuval Noah Harari)

I chose this book from a Books article in the New York Times
What’s the last great book you read?

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I picked up “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind,” by Yuval Noah Harari. I thought: “This will probably be O.K. I’ll probably learn a few things about Neanderthals and wheat.” But it ended up being the best reading experience I’ve had in at least 10 years. Harari writes about complicated things with unbelievable clarity, and I don’t think I’ve ever experienced a book where the author so often makes bold, original arguments that (somehow) immediately seem self-evident. It was so good that I started looking for any other book that seemed vaguely similar, most notably “Guns, Germs, and Steel,” by Jared Diamond. Diamond’s book won the Pulitzer in 1998 and is (probably) a little more respected, simply because it’s more rigorous and the style is more academic. And while that book is also undeniably excellent, I still liked “Sapiens” more. This is partially because Harari had the benefit of Diamond’s pre-existing work, but mostly because of the overall presentation. “Guns, Germs, and Steel” is a book that says, “Here are things that happened, and here’s why they happened the way that they did.” “Sapiens” is a book that says, “Here are things that happened, here’s why they happened, and here’s what that says about the experience of being human in the modern age.”