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charliemaigne's review against another edition
3.75
Otherwise, read on. It's an interesting book, though it definitely has a pessimistic view of everything from farming practices to medicine to our future. I disagree with the author on a very basic level, and I think some of his reading of certain scientific studies is suspect. I suppose I hope readers read this with a skeptical mind and don't let his worldview replace yours.
Graphic: Animal cruelty and Fatphobia
Moderate: Genocide
merilyn_ohtla's review against another edition
5.0
Graphic: Animal cruelty, Genocide, Racism, Rape, and Slavery
keishac13's review against another edition
4.5
Graphic: Violence, Genocide, Colonisation, and Animal cruelty
Moderate: Fatphobia, Racism, Slavery, Misogyny, and War
kinddog2073's review against another edition
1.0
1. Wild ans unsubstantiated sociological-anthropological conjectures
2. Unapologetically but still annoyingly coy in its defense of imperialism
3. Imperialist and capitalist propaganda, sum and substance
It is a frustrating read written mostly (though not entirely) in a self-righteous and snivelling tone. Harari at once appears to either trust the reader to make their own critical conclusions about say, the validity of American justifiation for atomic war crimes, but not enough to stop himself from arguing in favour of (or at least against substantive criticisms of) inexusable genocidal empires that to this day continue to reap the benefits of and never pay the price or reparations for their centuries of crimes against humanity.
The wild conjectures at least are darkly funny, but the uncritical defense and optimism applied to "Western values" betrays a lot about the writers view of the world.
No wonder Obama, Bill Gates, and Jared Diamond praised this book.
Graphic: Genocide, Xenophobia, Racism, and Violence
scifipunk's review against another edition
5.0
There is a lot of information in there, but the lively style makes it easy to read regardless.
I enjoyed that Harari manages to approach complicated issues from multiple perspectives and explains controversies among scientists very well. All opinions given are explained, and the author interestingly does not leave out issues he does not have a satisfying answer or explanation for (yet), but rather admits to that and moves on.
I also noticed that the translator localized all examples or comparisons, and did so very well.
This is one of the books that I see myself re-reading over and over in the future, and I truly wish it had been around when I was a child.
Graphic: Colonisation
Moderate: Animal cruelty and Genocide
Minor: Child death, Slavery, War, Violence, and Sexism
bookreadingelf's review against another edition
2.75
Minor: Slavery and Genocide
cjwicker's review against another edition
4.5
Moderate: Genocide
Minor: Fatphobia
jlautry's review against another edition
4.0
The first part of the book really sucked me in. This surprised me because I have a hard time reading and staying interested in non-fiction books. But parts 1, 2, and 3 really held my interest. The author discusses multiple theories about humankind throughout the book and talks about the likelihood of each, which I thought was interesting.
The book lost me towards the end when I got into the Industrial Revolution and Politics. Those topics just don’t seem to interest me as much. So, full disclosure, I mostly skimmed most of the last couple of parts of the book. Something I didn’t like about the book is it made assumptions about the reader’s knowledge level of certain people and historical events. I had to do a fair amount of Googling who this was and what that was.
If you are religious in any way (I am), know that the author is not. However, he does go into the history of many religions and the contributions (good and bad) that came from it. I particularly liked this part and found it really interesting to learn more about other spiritual beliefs other than my own.
This has nothing to do with the content of the book, but I think it’s worth mentioning. This book is REALLY heavy. Like, physically heavy. This was probably my least favorite thing about reading the book was my arms and wrists would literally start hurting if I sat reading it too long.
Overall, for a non-fiction book, I really liked it and I learned a lot of history that I didn’t know before. I think it’s a worthwhile read!
Minor: Animal death, Genocide, Slavery, and War
lanid's review against another edition
5.0
Minor: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Colonisation, Genocide, Racism, Religious bigotry, Slavery, and War
yellow_star's review against another edition
2.0
It should be a good overview of humanity's history, and parts of it are that, but there's constant butt ins from the author being an r/iamverysmart type prick. One example of many: "[humans developed more and more specialized niches] including niches for imbeciles like water carriers or factory workers." What kind of classist asshole writes that because someone is in the bottom of a class organization and can only get low paying jobs they themselves are a brain dead idiot?!? Who tries to make a fact based argument that classism and other types of prejudice are how superior genes work out and arrange themselves in a society besides a prejudiced jerk? That's just one example, the author gleefully throws in many other attacks against many other groups and ideologies that don't really connect with or build on the academic content of the book and are mainly just there to pretend there's a factual basis for being an asshole. There are a few parts where the author just innocently covers prejudice as it pertains to human history which is totally a valid thing to have a lot of in a book about human history, but they still add in their personal hateful opinions where it adds nothing and isn't pertinent to what is being learned. I still gave it 2 stars because there's some actual facts in there and the book is well organized but I bet that's to the credit of the editor more than this jerk author. What kind of person tries to pretend there are factual arguments supporting imperialism and classism and racism as helping our species thrive? The author does not differentiate between established facts and his own personal theories, I would guess that is because of an oversized ego thinking all of his own personal theories and opinions are equal to established facts. Maybe all the good reviews of this popular book are just people being blinded by the illusion of facts supporting prejudice in this to not see it's just the author's own barely disguised hatefulness? I've never read such a bad popular book. There have to be other books that are a summary of human history with a more reliable narrator though.
Moderate: Racism, Religious bigotry, and Colonisation
Minor: Genocide
Classism