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1857010072

Nguyễn Anh Quân

Advanced Reading

29 February 2020

An extraordinary history book: Sapiens

Yuval Noah Harari, a lecturer in history in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, was born

in 1976, Israel. He is famous for his trio of books in which he mentioned his concern about

macro-historical questions. The first book in his series is ‘Sapiens: A brief history of

humankind.’ The book was published in 2014 and became the bestselling book with an array of

compliments at that time.

‘Sapiens: A brief history of humankind’ is a nonfiction book relating to history. As stated

in the title, the content of the book mainly mentions the evolution of Homo sapiens, one of many

other Homo genera, since it was an insignificant species until being the ruler of the world. The

book contains 20 chapters divided into four parts, three of which discuss three big revolutions in

the Homo sapiens species’ history, one of which discusses the unification of humankind.

In part one, the author mentioned the first revolution of human beings, the cognitive

revolution. Homo sapiens together with other homo genera was in the race of evolution as they

had a new way of thinking and communicating. The impact of having bigger brains on the

appearance of human beings is also mentioned. The last chapter of this part discusses the first

migration of homo sapiens from Afro-Asian landmass to other parts of the world.

In part two, the second revolution – the agricultural revolution – as well as its

consequences are mentioned. Human beings at that time changed their living habits bit by bit
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from foragers to farmers because of a cereal, wheat. Then, the appearance of imagined orders

made people able to cooperate in a large amount. When nations had been formed, mathematics

and alphabet were created in order to store data as human brains have a limit on remembering.

Part three discusses the unification to become one empire in the world of humankind in

myriad aspects after the agricultural revolution. Despite the belief that there are various nations

and cultures, the author gives different evidence on different aspects such as currency, imperial

visions, and religion to show the similarities of these nations and cultures. As he mentions, all

those things are made up by the belief of human beings in certain kinds of myths.

In the last part, Homo sapiens takes one more step in history, coming to the scientific

revolution. As people admitted their ignorance, they discovered new things, which started the

scientific revolution. Then, with the cooperation of scientists and the governments, Europe

commenced the Industrial revolution, which leads to the flourishing of capitalism.

The history-telling approach of ‘Sapiens: A brief history of humankind’ is not boring but

interesting. In each chapter, Yuval gives readers an aspect, an event, or an achievement of a

period. Then, he explains why things happen by giving two to three reasonable theories since

there is no concrete reason for an event in history. He also gives an example for each theory so

that readers could understand fully. Sometimes, when a theory is crucial, Yuval analyses a real

object or a story to help readers understand more properly. For instance, in order to explain the

importance of credit in capitalism, the author made a whole story of two German financiers

(356). Therefore, it is straightforward to absorb the information and follow the ideas.

The writing style of Yuval is quite easy to read, though it seems theoretical at first. He

clarifies clearly most terms in the book as if he was giving a lecture for a secondary student.

Furthermore, he divides each point into different aspects and discusses these aspects one by one.
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Hence, readers will not be overloaded with new information. Readers are also able to rely on the

information of the book because Yuval uses reliable resources and cites them.

When telling the history of Homo sapiens species, Yuval not only gives information but

also analyses it thoroughly. Other history books merely list a sequence of events with simple

explanations or mention solely great men with their achievements. This book is distinctive.

When discussing any part, he put himself into different perspectives in order to assess each

period or achievement more comprehensively. In the agricultural revolution, for example,

farming made Homo sapiens have a larger population but live more restrictively. In the

biological perspective, it was a success as evolution only concentrates on copies of DNA helixes

(94). However, it was a trap as farming goes against the instincts of human beings in the

psychological perspective (Luxury Trap). Moreover, he also discussed the consequences of those

changes for individuals in order to answer the macro-history question, which is whether each

person is happier after each change or not. It was stated in the book that:

Most history books focus on the ideas of great thinkers, the bravery of warriors,

the charity of saints and the creativity of artists. They have much to tell about the

weaving and unravelling of social structures, about the rise and fall of empires,

about discovery and spread of technologies. Yet they say nothing about how all

this influenced the happiness and suffering of individuals (444).

Which makes readers have a new point of view for history. One more point is that the

author believes that there is no good or bad person in the streamline of history. Because of that,

he reveals all the good and bad influences that Homo sapiens have had on other species, whereas

contemporary citizens tend to deny the bad influences. One example is that the migration of

Homo sapiens in the world led to the extinction of myriad species (The Flood). While people
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nowadays use different excuses for this, Yuval has given an array of statistics in the book to

oppose.

Reading the book gives me a general but comprehensive knowledge of our species.

Though I have an interest in history and I have had some basic world history knowledge, the

book still provides me with new knowledge. As the author considers a period through myriad

perspectives, it makes me see history as well as other events in my life with a new perspective.

In my opinion, teenagers should read this book. As they should be exposed to different

types of knowledge, history is not an exception. This book contains basic knowledge of the

history of our species, so there is no reason not to read it. Moreover, reading this book helps

teenagers to sharpen their thinking as it shows myriad perspectives to approach a problem,

especially in the academic field. Teenagers could apply this when they examine a topic in order

to cover the topic more comprehensively.

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Works Cited

Harari, Yuval Noah. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. London: Vintage, 2015. Print.