Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind is as its title proclaims: a brief history of humankind. It's also a brief - and disturbing - history of humankind's impact on the planet and the other species, including those that were arguably human, that call it home. Spoiler alert: Harari minces no words in labeling Homo sapiens "ecological serial killers." It's hard to disagree. In any event, Harari manages to combine not only a general history, in which he effectively makes the case that our hunter-gatherer forebears of 10,000 years ago were happier and healthier than much of humankind today - with economic history (the origins of money and credit, the early trade routes, globalization in all its glory) and even aspects of philosophy. 

In regards to the latter, Harari in fact takes a sharp turn late in the book and goes as far as to pose the question of whether happiness depends on deluding oneself. (In case you can't tell, yes, I liked the book, and the writing, very much.) In fact, Harari's dry humor is on display from the first chapter when he declares, "Sapiens...is more like a banana republic dictator." I shouldn't have been surprised when a few dozen pages later, as he explains that the average sapien brain has actually decreased in size since we stopped having to hunt or forage our daily bread and that, in fact, the transition away from the survival lifestyle opened up "niches for imbeciles," which allowed the less....worthy?...to survive and pass on their unremarkable genes.

Time and again, Harari drives home the point that humans, excuse me, Homo sapiens, have lied, stolen, killed, and otherwise ruined things every opportunity they've had, literally from time immemorial. In the time of Hammurabi, "Superiors got all the good things in life. Commoners got what was left. Slaves got a beating if they complained." Cortes described the Spanish obsession with gold to the Aztecs succinctly as a "disease of the heart;" the Soviet experiment with the central barter system meant that "Everyone would work according to their abilities, and receive according to their needs," became "everyone would work as little as they can get away with and receive as much as they could grab." And let's not get into the scourge of religion where, for example, "over the course of...1,500 years, Christians slaughtered Christians by the millions to defend slightly different interpretations of the religion of love and compassion." (I told you, Harari's good.)

The miracle, it seems, is that we've survived to this point. Whether the species will continue to evolve for millenia more, though, is an open question. As Harari concludes, "is there anything more dangerous than dissatisfied and irresponsible gods who don't know what they want?" 

Four stars.