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Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

Yuval Noah Harari

Finished
February 2024
Status
read
Tags
history anthropology popular science

Review

A sweeping account of human history through three revolutions: cognitive, agricultural, and scientific. Harari is sometimes too confident in his big claims, but the book's central argument — that our ability to believe in shared fictions is what made cooperation at scale possible — is one of those ideas you can't unsee once you've encountered it.

"You could never convince a monkey to give you a banana by promising him limitless bananas after death in monkey heaven."