Is Sapiens Worth Reading?

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Pretty much everyone recommends reading Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. Tim Ferris's podcast interviewee's often say that Sapiens is the book they gift the most and Amazon's 20,000 ratings give it 4.6 stars. But, with over 400 pages of dense content, is it actually worth reading? Or is it just 400 pages of boring, unenlightened, irrelevant history? Lets find out.

Early on in the book, it became clear to me that I didn't know much about the history of humans. It isn't studied in classrooms or discussed in modern day conversations or popular content. Most people seem to shrug off how we got here and do not seem too bothered to understand. You are therefore working off a bit of a blank slate. Yuval Noah Harari does an excellent job of building up the story and scenes with visual language depicting what an average day looked like hundreds of thousands of years ago. Essentially, a detailed, visual timeline is created in your mind showing the transformation of early humans to where we are now.

In summary, this book condenses lots of research, ideas and the whole of human history into a logical, easy to read and understand, visual way that gives you an overview into a topic in which simply doesn't get taught elsewhere. I think it is definitely worth reading, although this is is not a life-changing book, in the sense you won't become enlightened or change the direction of your life. But, importantly, it does give an appreciation into how we got here. Be prepared for a slow patch in the middle and go into the book knowing that you probably have very limited knowledge of the topic and you will learn lots.

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I really enjoy books that span over human civilisation as it's a nice reminder how much we've achieved as a species as well as the destruction we've caused along the way. Have you ever read Bill Brysons a short history of nearly everything?

If you enjoyed that then I would say you would definitely enjoy Sapiens as I found it more interesting and less "text booky". I'm currently reading Homo Deus and enjoying it.

Guns, Germs, and Steel, which is once of Noel's heavy influences, is absolutely worth reading, too.

No one can decide for you. I prefer to read business books, so to me it's a big NO. But if your interest aligns, you may read.