Amazon.com.au:Customer reviews: Sapiens

Top positive review

Science and making it up as we go along

Reviewed in Australia on 3 November 2018

This is a profound book. I took over 30 pages of notes.

This is the best book I've read on our 'imagined orders', money, religion, politics, law etc, their clash with the discoveries of science, and how we try to find meaning in it all.

The author says that liberalism is the dominant religion today, I would say it's consumerism. Either way, or another way, can't wait to get into the authors next book

14 people found this helpful

Top critical review

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M A Cosgrove

No understanding of Humanism

Reviewed in Australia on 19 November 2021

Sapiens contains some interesting reflections on human history, but scattered throughout the book are sections that are fanciful or just plain wrong. In particular, Harari has no idea what modern Humanism is. Claiming that there are three branches of Humanism, two of which are religious and the third including the Nazis is deeply offensive. Humanism is a compassionate, rational and scientific world view that values human flourishing and seeks to minimise the suffering of humans and other sentient creatures. It is the complete antithesis of Harari’s representation.

One person found this helpful

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From Australia

Science and making it up as we go along

Reviewed in Australia on 3 November 2018

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14 people found this helpful

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dr c

And we humans think we’re unique!

Reviewed in Australia on 16 November 2020

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What an information packed journey through human history - pity history was not taught like this at schools and universities. Harari glides the reader easily through understanding our homo sapien species evolutionary history, the periods of how we lived and why (such as the hunter gatherer, the agriculturist, the scientist) and the relative benefits or otherwise to mankind of our development ( which often have not led to greater happiness or less cruelty). Given that we are just extensions of the animal kingdom we are subject to the control of many factors outside of our control - so not so great after all. In fact in the not so distant future we are likely to be another species. A masterful read.

3 people found this helpful

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Matthew Dilnot

Wish I had read this book 20 years ago. But then we didn't know what we know now.

Reviewed in Australia on 31 December 2019

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A wonderful book which plots out succinctly the history of sapiens in a manner which is palatable, giving the highlights from a broad range of literature.

There are some errors in the book which are disappointing as it may undermine your faith in the rest of the book and there is a reasonable dollop of the authors opinion. By and large though I feel the author is pragmatic in his writing at the risk of upsetting many, which makes the book even more enthralling. No holds barred as they say.

It should be mandatory reading for most schools if not just for encouraging educated debate.

Thank you Yuval for this wonderful book. I will make reference to it regularly for many years I imagine.

Matt

6 people found this helpful

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Sapiens=History book=Exciting

Reviewed in Australia on 17 December 2020

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Sapiens Brief History Of Humankind

Firstly I want to tell you that this is a history book. You might think that this is a boring book, but it's actually a fascinating book with lots of important events such as 2011 Egyptian evolution.

Throughout this amazing book, I learned that we, Homo Sapiens, had so many things in the world and how they survived against all the other types of humans. Because of this book, I started thinking that we have to stop doing some crazy war to take someone’s happiness and not achieve anything, and we know that from all those histories of the war.

One thing that I really liked about this book is that unlike the other boring history books Sapiens is more like an action book, to be honest. I got this feeling of excitement when I was reading this book because I was curious about what is gonna happen and why the event has occurred.

One thing I prefer for you to do is get a notebook or something that you can take the note and maybe get a dictionary as there some really hard scientific words.

I bet that you have never read something like this before. I believe that this is a great book because whilst learning history you will have so much excitement and everything.

I recommend this book to people aged 13 and over. I am 12 right now and I get a bit confused about some bits in this book.

Now you have read my whole review but I don’t think everyone will love this book as there are some hard words and scientific diagram but this will make you get A+ in History

2 people found this helpful

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A Mentally Stimulating Read

Reviewed in Australia on 20 February 2021

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The early chapters were excellent and well-grounded. I found a few of the later chapters didn't have quite the same degree of logic or research evidence (they did have these, just not to the same extent), which didn't stop them being interesting, but did mean that I didn't get as much out of them as I couldn't accept their conclusions as readily. Nevertheless, this is a wide-ranging and important book and one everyone should read to understand human behaviour at a deeper level.

2 people found this helpful

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Bard C. Papegaaij

Interesting read, lacking depth in some places

Reviewed in Australia on 4 December 2015

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An ambitious and interesting overview of the history of Homo Sapiens. The tone is light and sometimes flippant, but the topics covered aren't, and the author raises some very important questions about our place in the scheme of things, and our future development.
I did find the book actually a bit disappointing towards the end; the first 2/3 were a fascinating read, with great insights, fresh perspectives, and well-written reflections on where we came from and how we got here. After that, however, the tone set in the first part of the book didn't work for the topics being discussed, and the narrative was lacking in the kind of surprising insights that made the first part such an enjoyable read.
Certainly a book I would recommend reading, but ultimately not as satisfying as it at first promised to be.

12 people found this helpful

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Dr Robbie Lloyd - Community Builder and Advocate for Empowerment of People With Disability and Mental Distress

Interesting viewpoint, but too mechanistic

Reviewed in Australia on 27 January 2018

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This is a brilliant storytelling exercise, devoid of cheesy hopefulness. But is core mechanistic assessment of life leaves you feeling bleak. So too does an objective assessment of today's politics, transglobal capitalism and environmental destruction. Many he's onto something? Just despair...

3 people found this helpful

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Markus Muller

Good and interesting read in these Covid times - read it now.

Reviewed in Australia on 31 October 2020

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Got hold of this book before all the madness with Covid started.
It was an excellent read, super informative and another piece in the puzzle that allowed me to make sense of the 2020 Covid situation and let me understand and put into context how pandemics affect history.
If you are think about buying this, do yourself a favour, pull the trigger and buy this now and read this book.
You will not regret this!

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Pieter G

The focus is Sapiens!

Reviewed in Australia on 28 November 2019

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I enjoyed reading this book with the uncomfortable cognitive concepts, that challenged my beliefs. This provided improved understanding of cognitive impacts on society. Discussing this online, I received significant negative feedback from crowd who did not understand that major focus is 'Sapiens', where I was challenged on other Human species farming artefacts significantly predating Sapiens Agricultural Revolution. I tried to explain this but got bombarded with "don't contradict me", especially from those who where adamant that Australian Indigenous arrived more than 60,000 years in Australia, whereas Sapiens eventually arrived here by foot overland and rudimentary rafts by sea from eastern Africa approximately 42,000 to 48,000 years.

2 people found this helpful

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A Brief History of Us?

Reviewed in Australia on 20 December 2019

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A wandering look at how we got here, and what we are doing with our "good" luck to be here. Enjoyed the first part of the book leading up to the argricultural revolution, but it seemed to lose its steam after that, or maybe I am just disappointed in what homo sapiens have done for the last 10,000 years. Enjoyed the writing style.

2 people found this helpful

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