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Suswatibasu (1701 KP) rated Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind in Books

Nov 20, 2017 (Updated Nov 20, 2017)

A good effort to tackle this mammoth subject but ends a little disappointingly

I am slightly on the fence about this book. No doubt, it's no mean feat to attempt to describe the beginning of civilisation, but I feel the author Yuval Noah Harari may have overstretched himself.

What begins as a scientific exploration in to the separation or perhaps merging of the distinct human genuses ie. Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals, quickly becomes a political and social study. As a result, the book begins well but deteriorates as he moves away from a more analytical approach.

As the story moves towards times that we are more familiar with, it's not enough for the writer to tell us what happened, and perhaps share some of his pet theories on the sweep of history. Instead, we get increasingly speculative interpretations of what the author thinks are the big ideas in history. He takes no care to qualify these grand statements of opinion, but instead presents them as facts.

While I agree with his anthropological assertions surrounding religion as a method of homogenising populations and allowing flow of information, many reviews seem to be quite antagonistic towards this point of view and as a result there are definitely two camps of thoughts in regards to this book.

However, his whitewashing of colonialism and imperial rule is disparaging, literally explaining the benefits reaped by colonised countries from such destructive regimes, glossing over partition and genocide. Overall, I think that it is written well, but there are too many opinions and not enough evidence-based arguments.