This history of mankind starts out with a bang, reminding us that the truths we hold self-evident are imagined, and seems like an introduction to cultural anthropology presented as a history with economics and assorted other social science ideas thrown in. It becomes less focused as it progresses and sometimes seems less like the work of an Israeli history professor and more like hot air from the guy next to you at the bar. Harari brings up the old saw that Communism and Capitalism are essentially religions. He mentions the term syncretism to describe how people run their religious ideas together as it pleases them, but he seems to take the Nazi's (another religion) "tenets" at face value as if people always followed them for something besides being coerced or for their own self-interest or for some other reason having nothing to do with some psychopath's tenets. If he mentions evolutionary psychology, it is in passing. Harari spends some time discussing our knowledge of the neurotransmitters associated with happiness, but he says, "In addition, most biologists are not fanatics. They maintain that happiness is determined mainly by biochemistry, but they agree that psychological and sociological factors also have their place." To me, this shows a misunderstanding of the whole business. The neurotransmitters are a gross or high-level mechanism that is correlated with some behavior or feeling. They do not preclude any particular associated sociological factor. I wonder if the biologists that he thinks are fanatics, are the ones who would tell him that eventually (if the grant money holds up) all brain activity will be reduced to its physical mechanisms.