Book Review – Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

Reading (and finishing) this book was a great experience for me. I decided to read it in Hebrew, my 3rd language and the language in which the book was originally written, and just the feel of the 400+ pages written in the “wrong” direction was intimidating. But it was a great selection for this challenge.

History is usually taught in a very dry and boring way. This is sad because history has so much “chili” in it that there is no end to the stories that can be told, and this is the way that Yuval Noah Harari, the author of the book, tells the long history of the world. From how the modern human began in the planes of Africa to become the ruler and master of the planed (at least in our thinking). There are many leaps through this journey, and our ability to tell stories and imagine things is probably one of the main ones. We tell stories to create a joint past, and envision a better future together. We tell stories to explain why the world behaves in one way or another. And we tell stories for fun. Just like this book does.

There is a main question at the end of the book asking what the future will bring… thankfully Mr. Harari already wrote a second book where he tries to answer this.

Great read. Hope the next one will be the same. As usual, you can buy this book from amazon, and thank me at the same time for informing you 🙂