Sapiens

Harari compresses the history of humankind into three revolutions: the cognitive revolution that gave Homo sapiens language and shared myths, the agricultural revolution, and the scientific revolution. His central claim is that our species dominates because it can cooperate flexibly in large numbers around shared fictions such as money, religion, nations and companies.

The book is fast, provocative and easy to argue with. Specialists have criticised some of its generalisations, and its confident tone sometimes outruns the evidence. Its real value is the questions it raises about progress, happiness and what binds societies together, which make it a good starting point for wider reading.