Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow

by Yuval Noah Harari

The movie The Third Man is set in Vienna immediately after the end of the Second World War. Reflecting on the recent conflict the character Harry Lime says: ‘After all, it’s not that awful . . . In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.’ Lime gets almost all his facts wrong – Switzerland was probably the most bloodthirsty corner of early modern Europe (its main export was mercenary soldiers), and the cuckoo clock was actually invented by Germans – but the facts are of lesser importance than Lime’s idea, namely that the experience of war pushes humankind to new achievements.