Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

If relative terms, Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind really is quite brief. But as I was reading it, it often felt anything but brief.

I started reading this is May, but that was the wrong time to read such a heady tome. It was our second month of being "safer-at-home" and I needed light escapism. I didn't finish it by the time the book expired off my iPad, so I requested it again. It came a little over a week ago and I decided that now was the time to finish the book.

After reading a little bit of the book, I realized that a lot of what Harari covers are things that my son and I have been talking about over the past few months. I encouraged my son to read the book along with me. (I love the idea of family book club.) He started reading it the other day and he said, "This is what I've been talking about all these months." Exactly!

Harari covers the entire history of humans as we know them. From the first humans until the present. Or until 2014. Which makes me really wonder if Harari plans to update since in my mind, lots has changed in the world since 2014. Lots.

He covers to many interesting theories which would be impossible to concisely share here. It also makes me wonder, if we ever get to discuss this at book club, how easy or difficult this book would be to discuss in a book club. There's just so much there. What grabbed my attention might not have grabbed the attention of others. If it wasn't for book club, though, I don't think I would have ever picked up this book. And I did feel compelled to finish it, even not being certain if the community book club will ever get to discuss it. I do, however, look forward to discussing more of this with my son.

There were a lot of things covered that I found interesting. More importantly, this book was incredibly thought-provoking. But here's what I found the most fascinating and it comes from the Q&A with Yuval Noah Harari.

What inspired you to write a book about the entire history of humankind? What was your aim?

When I was a teenager, I became very troubled by the fact that I didn't understand what was really happening in the world - why things were the way they were, and what the aim and meaning of life were. I asked my parents, my teachers and other grown-ups and, shockingly, it turned out that they too didn't really understand life. But I was even more amazed by the fact that they seemed not to care about it. They were very worried about money, careers, their mortgage, the political situation, but were completely nonchalant about the fact that they didn't understand what life was all about. I promised myself that when I grew up, I would not get bogged down in the mundane troubles of daily life, but would do my best to understand the big picture. Writing the book was, in a way, fulfilling this promise that I had made to myself.

I'd highly recommend this book if you want to be guiding in thinking about the big picture.