A Review of "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I came to know about Mr. Yuval Noah Harari when I was asked to translate one of his interviews that was published in New York Times. The main focus of that interview was his views on dealing with Covid 19 pandemic, and how the biggest danger is not the virus itself, rather how governments are exploiting the situation to increase draconian surveillance on the citizens of a nations. If someone is interested to read it, here's a link:

https://tinyurl.com/y2txh4vt (Published in Prothom Alo online)

Anyway, working on Mr. Yuval intrigued me, and I decided to get hold of his most famous book, "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind". I had no idea about the book's subject matter, but I assumed from the title that it is about world history, and how we came to the 21st century from the era of ape-men.

However, I was in for a glorious surprise. The first quarter of the book went really smooth. I came to know about many new perspectives on how human beings turned in to foragers, explorers, hunters, and eventually, farmers.

Some of the rather shocking revelations came in the form of vilifying human beings. The author blamed prehistoric humans for killing off other kinds of humans (Neanderthals) and also many species of plants and animals, just because homo sapiens didn't need them.

Here it is relevant to mention that the author is a hardcore atheist. I didn't know it before starting the book, and even if I knew, it would not bother me, but half way down the book, his beliefs became a problem for me; a person who believes in God and follows religion. I checked with a few other readers, and they also felt the issue.

From henceforth, Mr. Harari keeps criticizing and mocking religion in almost every page. Some of it can be taken as good humor, but most of it is borderline objectionable. Due to this tonality, even some of his important facts and findings became hard to grasp.

But this goes away again after another few chapters, and the books ends with a hopeful tone.

Despite of it's wavering tone, I still enjoyed reading the book, and it gave me a lot to think about. I look forward to reading more books authored by him.

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