Reviews tagging 'War'

Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari

10 reviews

andreamhi's review against another edition

challenging dark funny informative reflective slow-paced

3.5

I started reading this because my therapist lent me this book to help me with my existential crisis and if anything it made it worse, but it was interesting I guess. It was a tough read though, I almost never read nonfiction books.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Child death, Death, Genocide, Misogyny, Racism, Slavery, Violence, Colonisation, War, and Classism

bs1801's review against another edition

informative reflective slow-paced

3.25

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Animal cruelty, Colonisation, and War

bronzel's review against another edition

informative reflective medium-paced

3.75

Though-provoking, interesting, questionable

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Colonisation, and War

_mechita's review against another edition

challenging dark informative reflective tense slow-paced

2.25

in one word: traumatic 😀

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Death, Genocide, Hate crime, Rape, Sexual violence, Slavery, Violence, Xenophobia, and War

rafacolog's review against another edition

informative reflective medium-paced

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Death, Genocide, Misogyny, Racism, Colonisation, and War

keishac13's review against another edition

challenging informative reflective slow-paced

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Genocide, Violence, and Colonisation

Moderate: Fatphobia, Misogyny, Racism, Slavery, and War

scifipunk's review against another edition

challenging informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

5.0

This book was a very informative and yet surprisingly entertaining recap of literally, the history of humankind as modern scientists understand it.
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.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Colonisation

Moderate: Animal cruelty and Genocide

Minor: Child death, Sexism, Slavery, Violence, and War

burnt_milk's review against another edition

challenging informative reflective sad medium-paced

3.75

Overall a really interesting read with a lot to say about our place in the world and especially what we deem "progress". However there was such a rudimentary view of gender even for 2014 - no acknowledgement of intersex people, and while there is some talk about gender roles and differentiating gender from sex, the author avoids talking about trans people, and clumsily uses "he or she" for every example.
I've read in other reviews that there are also a few factual inaccuracies in the text.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Child death, Death, Racism, Colonisation, and War

Moderate: Slavery

Minor: Fatphobia and Transphobia

jlautry's review against another edition

informative reflective slow-paced

4.0

This was a book about humankind. From inception to current day. It discusses every aspect of being human that you could think of. From brain and physical development and social structures, to war, money, and politics. I think I learned more from this book than I did from any history or social studies class in school.

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!

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Content Warnings

Minor: Animal death, Genocide, Slavery, and War

lanid's review against another edition

challenging informative reflective

5.0

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Content Warnings

Minor: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Genocide, Racism, Slavery, Religious bigotry, Colonisation, and War