Michael’s review of Sapiens : Une brève histoire de l'Humanité > Likes and Comments

The last words on this book should be, In conclusion, I prefer reading REAL history books with caffeine rather than this decaffeinated, saccharin substitute for them. Well said.

Thanks Julie :-)

Oh I am sorry to read this as a hard bound copy is sitting on my TBR shelf! Guess it is going to be moved to the back of the shelf!

@Nancy You could always donate it to a library LOL!

Lol, I bought it 30% off because it was so promoted.

You know, when it is heavily promoted, that is usually in inverse proportion to quality...

To its quality

Lol

I dont think every reader has the means to understand something more..academic. I think its the right book to get someone interested and then move to something better.

Ok Jo, but then the author leaves no biography for further reading, so that interested someone would also be on his/her own to go further with their curiosity.

I was curious about this book but 'no bibliography' (!) is simply unacceptable. Hell, any undergrad paper requires a lot of bibliography!

The English version contains notes with authors, books, ... I saw in the preview on Amazon.fr that, indeed, the French edition does not contain these notes and references. Maybe you could ask the publisher why this is so.

I bought my (English) copy today.

@Tim, well I hope you enjoy it more than I did. Perhaps the French translation was poor...

This is not a regular history book, but more of a philosophical one. Harari delves into the history to understand how did we come to be what we are now, not to describe what has happened in the past.

@Nelson I realize that, I just felt that the science and history was too watered down for my taste and that at the end, he went off on seemingly irrelevant tangents. Each time I thought he was approaching an interesting conclusion, he would veer off in another direction contributing to my feeling that the entire work was superficial and sensational rather than deep, philosophical or scientific. Just as an example, his disdain towards the agricultural revolution sounds like a Fox&Friends sound-byte (“Hillary’s emails!!”) and once it is stated there is no deeper conclusion drawn.
Not my cup of tea I’m afraid.
Once again, maybe the translation sucked. The lack of notes and bibliography were definitely things that made me lose respect for the work as well.

@Michael. I agree with you on superficiality, too many points, vectors and variables.

What I did like about him was the way he connected evolutionary psychology with history, because he was able to create new ways to understand ourselves. And even if we can't consider this science, only speculation and good communication, I believe he was able to move some of us and put us to think about all these things.

I consider him a sort of Carl Sagan, someone with good knowledge of facts and how science works, but where they both shine is in the telling of very good stories.

Thanks Nelson, I’ll agree with you that far.
I’ll just repeat that the anti-agricultural revolution bit (repeated in at least 3 or 4 different places in the book) was a cheap sound-byte that didn’t really lead to any new understanding. The anti-racism stuff was very appreciated in any case. Also, he sort of lost me with his tangents at the end.

I kind of suspected this book would be kind of "meh". Based on your review, I think I'll skip it.

Thank you for this review. My cousin has high regard for this book, but I wasn't convinced. You just saved me from buying it. I'll borrow it from him first, and if it is worth then I might consider.

Let me know if your mileage with it differs from mine. I did admit to reading the French translation which as just bleh and had ZERO supporting materials which kind of killed the deal for me.

I suspect the random chapter at the end was to entice people to read his next book which looks towards the future.

Good for educational reasons, waking up the search for knowledge. I would like to se it in school for kids around 14 something.

"the agricultural revolution (is) "history's greatest ripoff" "

Never heard this - what is the argument?

As any avid reader knows, reading time is precious. I had been considering this book, but you have convinced me that I am better off taking something else off the to-read pile (visualize a pile of books the size of Jack's beanstalk). Thank you!

It's project Gilgamesh, not Gutenberg. 😋 He starts writing about it in the chapter about religion because Gilgamesh is an ancient myth about death, then it pops out later

I put this book off for a long time, expecting pseudo intellectual crap as it was Obama’s book of the year, and lots of people with questionable taste were 5/5ing it. Well maybe i’m just a dummy when it comes to sociology and history, but i loved this book too. I don’t know why i loved it. I guess it was so many interesting things I didn’t know that gave me so many opportunities to read more on wiki if i wanted. Def 5/5 everyone should read this book.

Glad to have read your review before wasting more time in a sociology book.

Great review!! I liked this book more than you did, but I agree that it lacks intellectual heft and academic rigor. That surprised me. It felt like I was reading a superficial history book.

Totally agree, especially with Harari’s dishonest around his own religious (Buddhist) bias. Many chapters end up reading like Buddhist evangelism

@Michaelfinocchiaro What history books would you reccomend?

I don't think it is a one star. I gave it 3 stars but added a self "Strange ideas.) I had read 1491 by Mann (who this guy claims is his mentor) just before reading this one. His chapter on "religion" is just ridiculous! I gave it 3 stars but really it is a 2.5 for me. Some of the chapters are good for newbies.

@Amanda, Honestly, I don’t know what to recommend that has the same scope, but a more interesting and consistent core to it. Gwenn Rigal’s book on cave painting and the late Paleolithic was excellent but I am afraid that it has not been translated into English
@Elizabeth, perhaps but my copy (French translation from Michel Aubin (it was a gift otherwise I would’ve read it in English) was horrible and had no notes or bibliography. I guess if I were to torture myself and read the English original, it might get an additional star. Funny, it came up in a dinner conversation where a neighbor’s wife was praising it, but she read thé original English. She liked his refusal to stake a position whereas as @Emilio says above, I found that his Buddhism was becoming as militant as Herbie Hancock’s!

Hmm, disagreed completely. I liked Sapiens very much, I believe it was one of my most interesting reads in 2018. And while I am not an expert in any topic covered in it, I do read lot of history. Giving one star to this one and calling it "for dummies", it just sounds you are trying to look down on it from elitistic point of view.

@Nikola I see what you are saying, and like I said in a previous comment, it may have been the lackluster French translation (and it was DEFINITELY due partially to the utter lack of bibliography in the French edition), but honestly, what meaning did you actually derive from it? What was your takeaway? That we are all evil because of the agricultural revolution? What solution does he offer to that? None.
In contrast, Guns, Germs and Steel by Diamond is a far more concrete study of human development from Neolithic times forward and had far more meaning for me.
I just feel like it was a faux-intellectual work (quickly followed by two equally vapid but heavily promoted and commercially successful sequels. I don’t think I am alone in my thoughts on this.
I wonder whether Knausgård likes it. Hmm.

Being a Jared Diamond fan I was excited about reading this book. I enjoyed it at first too, considering his simple writing style accessible, much like Carl Sagan's. However, a quarter into it I started to realize his arguments lacked the academic rigor one would expect from an Oxford PhD and read more like a secondary school or undergraduate textbook. At one point I nearly choked on my my coffee when he blithely mentioned the French Revolution was not caused by famine. Apocryphal or not, has he never heard the "Let them eat cake" quote attributed to Marie Antoinette? Hunger was indeed one of the main reasons for the French peasantry's revolt! I doubt the French translation you read had anything to do with your overall disasatisfaction with the book since many of us who read the English translation felt the same way, although we at least we got the bibliography! The original publication in 2011 was in Hebrew and I must say some of his observations since then have not aged well, such as his contention that globalization has caused nationalism to recede into history. But of course this was before the Trump era, Brexit, and the rise to power of other jingoists in Hungary, Poland and Turkey since, which not many of us ever saw coming. I am 300 pages into the book but have decided to move on to something else. I may try reading the last 150 pages at a later date when I am in the mood for something unchallenging but still interesting. I'd give it 3.5 stars for that enjoyment.

@JD that is pretty generous 3.5 stars. Vapid arguments with, as you remarked, a fifth-grade reading level but professing to be a sort of social unification story for all-mankind? Hardly. I wish one of this book’s fans could name just one idea that this book puts forward that is truly original and not based on questionable sources, hearsay or complete bs (like the FR Revolution thing you mentioned.) If it had been put forward as a speculative essay, perhaps it could get 2 or 3 stars. But to be positioned as some kind of new philosophical perspective for the 21st C? Nope. Better to read KOK for that IMHO.
I am standing by my 1-star rating.

@Amanda I would recommend Guns, Germs and Steel by Diamond, People’s History of the US by Howard Zinn, Renaissance and Renascences by Panofsky for more nuanced views of history (despite the latter two being specific to the US and Europe respectively)

@Max the French xlation had no wiki references unfortunately and I was so turned off by this book that I don’t think I’ll waste my time pursuing the English translation. I’d rather attempt a true intellectual view such as Michel Foucault or Levi Strauss should I ever read more about sociology

quite long review for one star rating

Zdenko wrote: "quite long review for one-star rating"
You may have noticed the long comment string which the rating provoked. I felt I needed to justify my choice because this book is so popular.

Thanks for the review Michael. I've been reading it for a while and I just ended up frustrated with it at around 17%. Calling the agricultural revolution a fraud has been to me the last straw. I'll move onto reading something more interesting. Your review highlighted that this book is definitely overrated.

Thanks Alberto. That pissed me off too.

Try Larry Gonnick's Cartoon History of the Universe instead.

Sounds interesting!

It's brilliant. Very, very funny throughout, especially if you're a fan either of history or comic books. Manages to get in a lot of history.

Thanks. I do believe your review has just saved me a whole lot of time. I think I’ll try Bryan’s suggestion instead.

Don’t forget Guns Germs and Steel by Diamond as well!

I read an excerpt of 2 pages for class and it was awful... definitely won't be reading this one...

This review keeps reappearing in my feed, together with dozens of your reviews, day after day. You have your oppinion and on number of occasions your reviews are interesting, but do you have to shove it to other so many times? Are you on some kind of likes-hunt or what is the reason to edit them and make them repeat them all the time?

I am tweaking them from time to time, Nikola. Adding small things or fixing typos.