Didactylos reviewed Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari
Review of 'Sapiens A Brief History of Humankind' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
Fascinating and wide ranging
456 pages
English language
Published Dec. 27, 2014 by Penguin Random House.
El libro de no ficción del año. Bestseller internacional con más de diez millones de ejemplares vendidos. Número 1 en la lista de The New York Times. Recomendado por Barack Obama, Bill Gates y Mark Zuckerberg. De la mano de uno de los historiadores más interesantes de la actualidad, he aquí la fascinante interpretación de Yuval Noah Harari sobre la historia de la humanidad. Bestseller nacional e internacional, este libro explora las formas en que la biología y la historia nos han definido y han mejorado nuestra comprensión de lo que significa ser «humano». Hace 70.000 años al menos seis especies de humanos habitaban la Tierra. Hoy solo queda una, la nuestra: Homo Sapiens. ¿Cómo logró nuestra especie imponerse en la lucha por la existencia? ¿Por qué nuestros ancestros recolectores se unieron para crear ciudades y reinos? ¿Cómo llegamos a creer en dioses, en naciones o en los derechos humanos; …
El libro de no ficción del año. Bestseller internacional con más de diez millones de ejemplares vendidos. Número 1 en la lista de The New York Times. Recomendado por Barack Obama, Bill Gates y Mark Zuckerberg. De la mano de uno de los historiadores más interesantes de la actualidad, he aquí la fascinante interpretación de Yuval Noah Harari sobre la historia de la humanidad. Bestseller nacional e internacional, este libro explora las formas en que la biología y la historia nos han definido y han mejorado nuestra comprensión de lo que significa ser «humano». Hace 70.000 años al menos seis especies de humanos habitaban la Tierra. Hoy solo queda una, la nuestra: Homo Sapiens. ¿Cómo logró nuestra especie imponerse en la lucha por la existencia? ¿Por qué nuestros ancestros recolectores se unieron para crear ciudades y reinos? ¿Cómo llegamos a creer en dioses, en naciones o en los derechos humanos; a confiar en el dinero, en los libros o en las leyes? ¿Cómo acabamos sometidos a la burocracia, a los horarios y al consumismo? ¿Y cómo será el mundo en los milenios venideros? En Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari traza una breve historia de la humanidad, desde los primeros humanos que caminaron sobre la Tierra hasta los radicales y a veces devastadores avances de las tres grandes revoluciones que nuestra especie ha protagonizado: la cognitiva, la agrícola y la científica. A partir de hallazgos de disciplinas tan diversas como la biología, la antropología o la economía, Harari explora cómo las grandes corrientes de la historia han modelado nuestra sociedad, los animales y las plantas que nos rodean e incluso nuestras personalidades. ¿Hemos ganado en felicidad a medida que ha avanzado la historia? ¿Seremos capaces de liberar alguna vez nuestra conducta de la herencia del pasado? ¿Podemos hacer algo para influir en los siglos futuros? Audaz, ambicioso y provocador, este libro cuestiona todo lo que creíamos saber sobre el ser humano: nuestros orígenes, nuestras ideas, nuestras acciones, nuestro poder... y nuestro futuro. Reseñas:«El libro definitivo para entender quiénes somos. Provocador, lúcido, aporta un original enfoque sobre la esencia del ser humano.»Julia Navarro «Interesante y provocador. Este libro nos da cierta perspectiva del poco tiempo que llevamos en la Tierra, de la corta vida de la ciencia y la agricultura, y de por qué no debemos dar nada por sentado.»Barack Obama «Recomendaría este libro a cualquier persona interesada en una historia de la humanidad a la vez entretenida y desafiante [...] No se puede dejar de leer.»Bill Gates «Aborda las cuestiones más importantes de la historia y del mundo moderno y, además, está escrito con un estilo vívido e inolvidable.»Jared Diamond, premio Pulitzer y autor de Armas, gérmenes y acero «Un libro que invita a la reflexión.»Mark Zuckerberg «Un repaso absorbente de la peripecia humana, escrito con rigor e irreverencia ilustrada.»Antonio Muñoz Molina, El País «Un libro fascinante, como nuestra especie. Nos ayudará a saber de dónde venimos para decidir hacia dónde vamos. Recomiendo Sapiens casi antes que saludar. ¡Disfrútenlo!»Leonor Watling «Monumental, brillante, provocadora.»Pablo Jáuregui, El Mundo «Cuenta la historia del ser humano desde su origen hasta que se convirtió en el rey de la creación.»Iñaki Gabilondo «Me fascina la forma de pensar de este tipo.»Risto Mejide «El aclamado Sapiens de Yuval Noah Harari hace para la evolución humana lo que Brevísima historia del tiempo, de Hawking, hizo para la física [...], un excelente trabajo que perfila nuestra lenta emergencia y eventual dominación del planeta.»Forbes «Por fin alguien ha escrito un libro como este.»Sebastian Junger
Fascinating and wide ranging
Worth of reading, but not necessarily.
Wonder why people love this book so much. It's mostly just a collection of rants, obvious things at best, and generally inconsistent. If I knew the author as a friend and wanted to know his perspective in detail, it might be worth reading.
But it was kinda a mandatory reading, so completed it anyway.
A small book for a vast topic. I found it well worth reading. I got it from the library but may well buy the paperback. As I expected, it doesn't succeed in its attempts to explain things but does succeed in demolishing many of the "explanations" we have seen before.
It's also, not surprisingly, off track when it gets to recent history; "As the 21st century unfolds, nationalism is fast losing ground". It didn't take long for that to change.
В целом компетентный (несколько находящихся под вопросом взглядов и пара довольно странных выводов всё же присутствуют) развлекательного толка нонфикшн; да, очередной пересказ последних двух миллионов лет человеческой истории для тех, кто торопится, но на этот раз — с попытками интерпретации событий с несколько более философской точки зрения.
Great book about human history.
Not the regular facts but ideas and consequences.
Great book about human history.
Not the regular facts but ideas and consequences.
This was so good. I've read it twice, I will have to read it again.
Overall I liked it, but I thought the last half dragged.
“Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind” by Yuval Noah Harari is a rare work. A truly interdisciplinary telling of the rise of Homo sapiens to be the dominant species on earth, Harari’s book tells the story of humanity from there emergency to the present moment (and possible futures) in a mere 466 pages. Hariri is a that most rare breed of scholar: a generalist who can weave a grand story with deep insight and artfulness. Moreover, the book is fun— not only is Hariri an author of big ideas, he is also a fantastic writer.
There are too many ideas in this book to discuss here. What do you expect with a book that tells the entire history of humanity from start to (perhaps) finish? I purposefully want to keep away describing each detail. The story is too complex, and Hariri tells it much better than I can. The book …
“Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind” by Yuval Noah Harari is a rare work. A truly interdisciplinary telling of the rise of Homo sapiens to be the dominant species on earth, Harari’s book tells the story of humanity from there emergency to the present moment (and possible futures) in a mere 466 pages. Hariri is a that most rare breed of scholar: a generalist who can weave a grand story with deep insight and artfulness. Moreover, the book is fun— not only is Hariri an author of big ideas, he is also a fantastic writer.
There are too many ideas in this book to discuss here. What do you expect with a book that tells the entire history of humanity from start to (perhaps) finish? I purposefully want to keep away describing each detail. The story is too complex, and Hariri tells it much better than I can. The book is one that is well worth reading slowly.
If there was one essential point that provides the foundation to Hariri’s text, it would be the need for large-scale human communities to be developed and maintained through multiple inter-subjective realities. These are stories that are not inherently or objectively true and yet are essential to the functioning of human society. What I enjoy about his use of this idea is that it does not say that these things are true and need to be followed blindly. Nor does he say that we must arrogantly reject them out of hand as not true and therefore not important. He says that these ideas are simultaneously not true and very important. He playfully says that many of the great religious traditions are inter-subjective realities but so is money, capitalism, nations, human rights, gender, aristocracy, and even science. Essentially, these are narratives or stories that we tell and bind us closer together.
One smaller point that resonated with me was Hariri’s discussion of the cruelty that humanity has wrought against other animals on earth. This idea is a reoccurring presence in the book. Sapiens overtook their cousins like the Neanderthals violently. They destroyed most of the big animals on all continents. Sapiens domesticated animals and kept them in virtual slavery, which has only become more cruel and barbarous as a logical consequence of industrialization. This point shows a deeper truth: that Sapiens collective rise has been at the expense of much individual suffering.
I finished this book and its ideas and concepts still rattle around in my brain. Its lucid writing and deft handling of thought-provoking questions will challenge your own identity and will make you think about the world. I plan on assigning it as the back-bone text for a course I am going to teach at a university on the idea of ideas. I cannot recommend this book more highly.
It's not very often one finds a book that challenges and re draws the lines that define what we think we are. This is one. Reading Sapiens has made me question everything about being a human. Why do we define ourselves as such? And where are the boundaries?
What are the levels of reality that exist and how do they affect us... Everything from fire to societies to money to the genome and artificial intelligence. Mankind since it walked out of the jungles (so to speak) and up until it's facing of its true nature. Are we gods? Can we be? Should we be?
All of this questions pondered and asked in a nice, friendly, even funny tone that shouldn't scare away even the newest among us the anthropologist wannabes.
My personal highlight was the realization of the importance of stories, as maybe our biggest invention as a species... and …
It's not very often one finds a book that challenges and re draws the lines that define what we think we are. This is one. Reading Sapiens has made me question everything about being a human. Why do we define ourselves as such? And where are the boundaries?
What are the levels of reality that exist and how do they affect us... Everything from fire to societies to money to the genome and artificial intelligence. Mankind since it walked out of the jungles (so to speak) and up until it's facing of its true nature. Are we gods? Can we be? Should we be?
All of this questions pondered and asked in a nice, friendly, even funny tone that shouldn't scare away even the newest among us the anthropologist wannabes.
My personal highlight was the realization of the importance of stories, as maybe our biggest invention as a species... and our ability to share and belief those stories that has in the end allowed for us to create the world we live in (and all the horrors and wonders within it)
It is easily a 5/5 book in my opinion, a must read and I know I will be returning to it and recommending it to almost everyone who I come in contact with.
Colour me mind-blown.
Some books can follow you around. That appeared to have happened in the past few months with Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (HarperCollins). It just seemed to be popping up everywhere.
I got curious and before long, I placed a reservation request to the library. The moment I got my hands on it, I got engrossed, immediately. Sapiens, is an extraordinary and provocative book, often funny and wonderfully written. Its scope is ambitious, it traces the evolution of our species from the rise of our ancient and insignificant ancestors, around 70,000 years ago, when Sapiens “started doing very special things,” to our current place in the modern, technological age of the twenty-first century.
In his book, Yuval Noah Harari, a professor of history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, attempts to answer how we did it, how humans succeeded to become the most significant species, to …
Some books can follow you around. That appeared to have happened in the past few months with Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (HarperCollins). It just seemed to be popping up everywhere.
I got curious and before long, I placed a reservation request to the library. The moment I got my hands on it, I got engrossed, immediately. Sapiens, is an extraordinary and provocative book, often funny and wonderfully written. Its scope is ambitious, it traces the evolution of our species from the rise of our ancient and insignificant ancestors, around 70,000 years ago, when Sapiens “started doing very special things,” to our current place in the modern, technological age of the twenty-first century.
In his book, Yuval Noah Harari, a professor of history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, attempts to answer how we did it, how humans succeeded to become the most significant species, to basically rule the planet Earth. His thesis is that Homo Sapiens has succeeded to become the dominant species and control the world because of his ability to cooperate flexibly in very big numbers. Humans are the only animals that can do that. Using their imagination, they are able to create imaginative realities, such as religions, empires, states, ideologies, companies, human rights, and money. The latter is the most important story ever, because it has enabled humans to construct complex and sophisticated economic cooperative networks.
Three big revolutions shaped the Sapiens. First, the ‘cognitive’ revolution, about 11,000 years ago when humans began to change the way they live, by shifting from hunting and gathering to agricultural economies. Second, it was the ‘scientific’ revolution which began about 500 years ago when humans discovered their own ignorance, and they decided to do something about it. It was the beginning of science which brought major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, and transportation and had a profound effect on the socioeconomic and cultural conditions, in Britain initially, and then in Europe and North America. It also led to the Industrial revolution, about 250 years ago.
We are now experiencing the third one, the ‘biotechnological’ evolution which started after the World War II, about 70 years ago. Harari’s conclusion is that humans are about to change again and he is trying to identify the new possibilities and choices we are facing. We are entering a new era where the inevitable merger of human and machine might signal the end of Sapiens as a biological species, and the beginning of post-humans, bioengineered cyborgs that will be able to live forever.
http://maquinalectora.net
Este es uno de esos libros que tiene la capacidad de cambiar ideas, perspectivas y hasta vidas.
Con una escritura clara y directa, explica nuestro paso por el mundo como especie, nuestra evolución, y todo esto mientras pone a prueba nuestra forma de pensar y provocar nuevas líneas de pensamiento. Desde la prehistoria, expone cómo las revoluciones cognitivas, agrícolas e industriales nos han moldeado hasta ser algo casi anti-natural, por nuestro imaginario orden y estructuras tan fuera del mundo que nos vio nacer. Y cuestiona el futuro de nosotros los sapiens a medida que desarrollamos cyborgs, biónica y bioingeniería. ¿Seremos una especie evolucionada más allá de nuestra propia mano?
Este libro te deja un montón de cosas para aprender y un montón de interesantes preguntas para hacerte y seguir buscando respuesta a ellas.
Lo recomiendo ampliamente, es una grandiosa lectura para aprender más de quiénes somos.
Review to follow.