Sapiens

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

Yuval Noah Harari

What it’s about

Sapiens is a sweeping narrative of human history from 2.5 million years ago to today, framing Homo sapiens as an accidental dominator of Earth through cognitive tricks, myths, and revolutions rather than inherent superiority. Harari, an Israeli historian, blends archaeology, biology, anthropology, and economics into a provocative, big-picture synthesis—less textbook, more philosophical gut-punch. It's sold 25M+ copies for good reason: accessible prose, contrarian takes (e.g., agriculture as a "trap"), and unflinching on humanity's flaws. No moralizing, just patterns: We thrive on shared fictions amid biological randomness.

Why I like it

This book explains why we are so susceptible to the "Red Line" stories: we are a species that survives by telling tales. To be a "Blue Line" leader and a true Shithappensian, one must reject the convenience of accepting the simplistic stories provided by short-cutters, and instead continuously attempt to see behind the stories and belief systems, and try to develop an understanding of the forces and objective reality behind the make-believe nonsense that others so willingly cling to out of laziness, fear or hedonism.