Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari

My Rating - 4 out of 5 stars
Published by - Penguin Random House
Genre - Anthropology
Publishing Year - 2015
Language - English
ISBN - 978-0-099-59008-8
Pages - 512
Buy now - Amazon IN 

My Review - 

Sapiens starts with facts like these - about 13.5 billion years ago, matter, energy, time, and space became known as the Bing Bang. The story of these fundamental features of our universe is called physics.

About 300,000 years after their appearance, matter and energy started to coalesce into complex structures called atoms, combined into molecules. The story of atoms, molecules, and their interactions is called chemistry.

About 3.8 billion years ago, specific molecules combined to form vast and intricate structures called organisms on a planet called Earth. The story of organisms is called biology.

About 70,000 years ago, organisms belonging to the Homo sapiens started to form even more elaborate structures called cultures. The author tells about three critical revolutions that shaped history: the Cognitive Revolution began about 70,000 years ago. The agricultural revolution sped it up about 12,000 years ago. The Scientific Revolution took place only 500 years ago. This book tells the story of how these three revolutions have affected humans and their fellow organisms.

Sapiens is an excellent book written by Yuval Noah Harari with all the facts and figures that we generally ignore in our daily lives. This book is thought-provoking and changes one's thoughts about history and human evolution. The author tries to sum up as much as he can in this book, but in my opinion, a single book is not enough for a brief history of humankind. It never will be. 

Although the book is filled with the author's opinions. He believes that Earth is better off without humans. Some parts of the book are very intriguing, and some are so boring that you wish to stop reading. There is a lack of information about Neanderthals, which made me unsatisfied. I did like the scientific revolution part very much. 

This is the thrilling account of our extraordinary history - from insignificant apes to rulers of the world in which fire gave us power, gossip helped us cooperate, agriculture made us hungry for more, mythology maintained law and order, money gave us something we can really trust, contradictions created culture and science made us deadly. This book tells how we evolve, about our genes, and other exciting stuff. It's a must-read.