This book review summarizes Yuval Noah Harari's book "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind". It provides background on Harari, describing him as a historian, philosopher, and bestselling author. It then summarizes some of the key points from the book, including Harari's view of the Cognitive and Agricultural Revolutions in human history. While praising Harari's ability to provide insightful summaries, the review notes his contrarian attitude. It concludes by summarizing Harari's perspective on the future of humanity becoming "cyborgs" but remaining unsure of their goals and discontented despite their power.

1. BOOK REVIEW:
SAPIENS-A BRIEF
HISTORY OF
HUMANKIND
Submitted by : Nikhil bhatt (17bcl008)

2. Content
 About author
 book review
 Opinion of author

3. Title page of book
Sapiens: A Brief History Of
Humankind

4. About author
 Yuval Noah Harari is a historian, philosopher, and
the bestselling author of Sapiens: A Brief History
of Humankind, Homo Deus: A Brief History of
Tomorrow, and 21 Lessons for the 21st Century.
 Born in Haifa, Israel, in 1976, Harari received his
PhD from the University of Oxford in 2002, and is
currently a lecturer at the Department of History,
the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His books
have sold over 23 Million copies worldwide.
 In 2018 and in 2020, Yuval Noah Harari gave
keynote speeches on the future of humanity on
the Congress Hall stage of the World Economic
Forum annual meeting in Davos. Harari regularly
discusses global issues with heads of state, and
has had public conversations with Netherlands
Prime Minister Mark Rutte and with Austrian
Chancellor Sebastian Kurz. He also met with
President Emmanuel Macron of France, Chancellor
Angela Merkel of Germany, President Mauricio
Macri of Argentina, President Frank-Walter
Steinmeier of Germany, and Mayor Ying Yong of
Shanghai. In 2018, Yuval presented the first ever
TED talk delivered as a digital avatar, and in 2019,
he sat down for a filmed discussion on technology
and the future of society with Facebook CEO Mark
Zuckerberg.

5. Book review
In 1974, a grey-haired indigenous leader of Papua New Guinea
asked a visiting American ornithologist something like, “How
come you people dominate the world, while we have so little?"
It was a consequential exchange. Jared Diamond, who was
asked the question, had to shrug off the limitations of his original
discipline in order to find an answer. The result was Guns, Germs
And Steel: The Fates Of Human Societies where history was
stripped bare of politics and individuals, encompassed research
from the sciences and humanities, and backtracked all the way to
the Ice Age to tease out why some societies developed to travel
into outer space while others remained hunter-gatherers (the
short answer is geography).
Diamond’s global best-seller kick-started an academic revolution.
Microsoft founder Bill Gates is financing a “Big History Project"
course slated for worldwide roll-out to teenagers. Many
universities now offer multi-disciplinary courses in this vein, and
several writers have emerged in this “big picture of history" genre.
The latest, Yuval Noah Harari, is already a global celebrity. The
online course accompanying his splendid new book, Sapiens: A
Brief History Of Humankind, has already been taken by more
than 100,000 people.

6. Book review
First comes the Cognitive Revolution (approximately 30,000-
70,000 years ago), when “accidental genetic mutations changed
the inner wiring" of human brains to allow new ways of thinking
and communication. Why this happened to us, rather than, say, to
orangutans, or our even closer Neanderthal cousins, is according
to Harari still a mystery.
Another paradigm shift happened 10,000 years ago: “Scholars
once proclaimed that the agricultural revolution was a great leap
forward for humanity," Harari says. But “that tale is a fantasy….
The Agricultural Revolution certainly enlarged the sum total of
food at the disposal of humankind, but the extra food did not
translate into a better diet or more leisure. Rather, it translated
into population explosions and pampered elites. The average
farmer worked harder than the average forager, and got a worse
diet in return," Harari concludes scornfully.

7. Harari’s “brief history of humankind" answers its own
question in the Diamond vein: dizzying heights of
knowledge summarized in a paragraph, deep insights
delivered in zinging one-liners. But unlike his mentor—
acknowledged with “special thanks" as the man “who
taught me to see the big picture"—this 40-year-old
professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, is
full of feisty, contrarian attitude.

8. End
Everything comes together for Harari in the last few pages of
Sapiens, where he takes a superbly reasoned and deeply
disturbing telescopic look ahead into the future of humankind. He
believes “we stand poised on the brink of becoming true cyborgs,
of having inorganic features that are inseparable from our bodies,
features that modify our abilities, desires, personalities and
identities".
But there’s no escape from our limitations nonetheless. Despite
“the astonishing things that humans are capable of doing, we
remain unsure of our goals and we seem as discontented as
ever", writes Harari. “We are more powerful than ever before, but
have very little idea of what to do with all that power... Self-made
gods with only the laws of physics to keep us company, we are
accountable to no one...Is there anything more dangerous than
dissatisfied and irresponsible gods who don’t know what they
want?"