Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

One hundred thousand years ago, at least six human species walked the earth. Today there is one. How did Homo sapiens win? And at what cost? In Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari spans the entire arc of human history, from the cognitive revolution that made language and collective imagination possible, through the agricultural revolution that transformed our relationship to the natural world, to the scientific revolution that gave us the power to reshape the planet itself, asking not just how we got here but what it has actually meant for us to be human. Harari's most provocative insight is that Homo sapiens did not dominate the earth through superior strength or even superior intelligence, but through a unique capacity to believe in shared fictions, gods, nations, money, human rights, that allowed strangers to cooperate at massive scale. These collective myths are the invisible architecture of every civilization ever built. Drawing on biology, anthropology, economics, and history, and incorporating full-color illustrations throughout, Sapiens challenges everything we think we know about human evolution, our relationship to other species, and the direction we are heading. This tenth anniversary edition includes a new afterword from the author. A New York Times readers' pick for the top 100 books of the twenty-first century.