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book2011

Sapiens

Disciplines:
evolutionary biology/evolution
history
culture
history/big history

Summary

Yuval Noah Harari's 2011 (English 2014) grand history of Homo sapiens — tracing the cognitive, agricultural, and scientific revolutions in a single accessible narrative — the best-selling popular history of the last decade.

Core Contribution

Creates the grand accessible synthesis of human history — Sapiens combines cognitive science, evolutionary biology, economics, and cultural history in one accessible narrative; its central claim (humanity's uniqueness is our ability to believe in fictional narratives — money, nations, corporations) is the most memorable thesis in popular history.

Historical Influences

Jared Diamond Richard Dawkins

Intellectual Lineage

First published Hebrew 2011English 2014

Allied Works

Homo Deus Guns, Germs and Steel

Contemporaries & Peers

No recorded contemporaries.

Minds Influenced

Popular history genre

Intellectual Posterity

Sapiens Collective fictions thesis

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