#BOOKS BY YUVAL NOAH HARARI SERIES#

Occasionally, thereРІР‚в„ўs also a problem with terminology and conceptual apparatus. If sources for these claims exist, they are very difficult to correlate with the text. For example, he affirms that РІР‚Вloneliness and privacy were rare РІР‚в„ў that the human population РІР‚Вwas smaller than that of todayРІР‚в„ўs CairoРІР‚в„ў that the РІР‚Вaverage ancient forager could turn a flint stone into a spear point within minutesРІР‚в„ў and that РІР‚Вhunter gatherers living todayРІР‚В¦ work on average for just thirty five to forty five hours a weekРІР‚в„ў (52-6). In this section, the bibliography and citations are also problematic, Harari makes claims for which it is difficult to trace a source. His depiction of a foraging lifestyle (РІР‚ВA Day in the Life of Adam and EveРІР‚в„ў) unencumbered by the complexities and worries of civilisational living could be read as reactionary atavism. On the other, by casting the net so wide, it seems to advance a kind of apolitical attitude.Р”В®lsewhere, I wondered the extent to which Harari was projecting an idealistic (even Rousseauian) vision of a noble savage on pre-state peoples. On the one hand, it makes glib or expedient conclusions difficult to uphold. This long view of history makes it more difficult to allocate either praise or blame to historical actors, which is simultaneously a strength and a weakness of the writing. In some sense, then, the West bequeathed both a explicit notion of empire, as well as the means to critique it. Furthermore, the language and conceptual framework of nation states, democracy and individualist human rights are (arguably) Western constructs. This raises important questions for example, to those who decry the British rule in India (which undoubtedly committed atrocities), Harari points out that many of the civilisations that preceded it were also empires or invaders. His long-view of empire, and his willingness to see both horror and achievement in it, is admirable, as well as politically interesting in the contemporary climate. One thing he repeatedly stresses is the importance of not drawing overhasty conclusions from short time-frames.

Was the nasty, brutish and short life of people living in feudal civilisations worth it for our 15 minutes of happiness in the 21st century? Harari is ambivalent. This conclusion, however, is implicitly questioned by Harari, who has damning things to say both about our exploitation of animals (on an industrial scale) and the misery engendered by a transition from a foraging nomadic lifestyle to a settled agricultural one. Steven PinkerРІР‚в„ўs masterful recent account of human history in The Better Angels of Our Nature suggested a gradual decrease in human violence over historical time from pre-state peoples to the present day. Collective imagination emerges, in fact, as the most potent force in HarariРІР‚в„ўs account our history. ThereРІР‚в„ўs a sprinkling of Niall FergusonРІР‚в„ўs РІР‚ВappsРІР‚в„ў approach to his historical explanation, but thankfully, little of FergusonРІР‚в„ўs triumphalism. Specifically, Harari is interested in the discovery of new intellectual technologies and how these have shaped the lives of Homo Sapiens. Instead of a straightforward linear history of human events, however, Sapiens is a history of ideas.

His account of human nature and history seem to be a rejoinder to the geographical determinism of a Jared Diamond or the evolutionary-psychological approach of a Steven Pinker (who posits a consistent human nature to explain societal arrangement and prejudice).

Harari constantly seeks to destabilise our notion of what is natural- and what with hindsight seems like historical inevitability. The entire book is a brilliant exercise in counterfactuals: what could, might and shouldРІР‚в„ўve been. (Harari runs out of steam, a little bit, towards the end but on the whole it remains tremendously interesting).

#BOOKS BY YUVAL NOAH HARARI SERIES#

It reads as a series of punchy and provocative essays on fascinating subjects from the collective myth-making of religion and political ideology, to the universal acid of money (dissolving alternative forms of meaning), and a meta-historical look at science and empire. Sapiens is a vigorous and exciting new history of the human species.

Books by yuval noah harari