Sapiens

The proper title is "Sapiens: A brief history of humankind's beliefs".

La historia de la humanidad, desde un acercamiento biológico y antropológico. Sostiene un análisis casi neutral y semi lineal. La voz escribe en tercera persona lo que juega un papel interesante en la no identificación de la especie humana, y generar mayor comprensión de nuestra naturaleza.

Listened to the audio book. It's about 15 hours. It's so, so interesting. It's well written and easy to understand. It will have you looking at the world and yourself a little differently. The whole book is an exercise in thought. I really enjoyed it.

5/10

Was an excellent book except for the part about the agricultural revolution

It's very convincing and I really appreciate the ideas and perspective on religion especially. I learned long after reading it about the complete disregard for evidence and accuracy.

Bon llibre que fa un repàs, evidentment succint, a la història de la humanitat des de l'inici fins, més o menys, ara, des d'un punt de vista molt crític al capitalisme, al liberalisme i a la forma de gestionar-ho tot que tenim els humans en general. Una molt bona, a estones densa, lectura.

Verrta dėmesio knyga apie žmonijos istoriją, kaip mes čia esam ir kodėl mes esam tokie kokie esam. Galima pamąstyti jei kam rūpi ka nors veikti žmonijos labui :)

Unfortunately I didn't find any new to me insight in this book. Because of the size of the subject matter, it oversimplifies many things - perhaps I can use it to tell me what I need to learn more about because I didn't notice a simplification. It might be a good start for someone else to learn, at best. Furthermore, the author seems to have a bias that Buddhism has the Right Answers, which will never fail to annoy me.

Amaze

I can't really speak to the value of its scholarship, but this book zips along at a wonderful pace. It is extremely readable. That said, it does make a lot of superficial arguments. I wouldn't say that it is particularly deep.

I think this one is good fun for a high school senior thinking about starting a BA in History who wants an overview of potential study areas. The citations at the back of the book might also get them started down more specific paths.

Está genial

I can see why everyone from Bill Gates to Barack Obama was raving about it. It's an extremely compelling, accessible history - almost like a novelization - of humankind.

An interesting overview of the history of mankind. Learned a lot of surprising facts (i.e. the impact of humans (or actually "homo sapiens") on its environment is stupendous: the total wipeout of large marsupials in Australia total landscape changes, the wipeout of all other non-sapiens humans. The "bad deal" of the agricultural revolution. The role of stories to believe in in the development of sapiens (including, but not limited to religions), etc.etc). It's so much I'm afraid I'm going to forget a lot of them.

Has an impact on the way I view the world right now - hence 5 stars.