Recommendations
Books Like Sapiens
Best books to read after Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari
Sapiens argues that Homo sapiens came to dominate the earth through the uniquely human capacity to believe in shared fictions — religions, nations, money, laws — and that this cognitive revolution is both the source of our civilization and of our most destructive impulses. These 8 books extend that argument into evolutionary biology, cultural anthropology, world history, and the future of the species.
- 1
Buy on AmazonHomo Deus
by Yuval Noah Harari
The direct sequel — Harari's account of where the human species is headed next, arguing that having conquered famine, plague, and war, we will turn to the engineering of immortality, bliss, and god-like creative power.
- 2
Buy on Amazon21 Lessons for the 21st Century
by Yuval Noah Harari
The present-focused volume of the trilogy — Harari's account of the immediate challenges facing humanity (AI, bioengineering, nuclear war, ecological collapse, fake news) and how to think about them.
- 3
Buy on AmazonThe Dawn of Everything
by David Graeber
A radical rethinking of human prehistory — arguing, against the standard narrative from Rousseau to Diamond to Harari, that early humans lived in enormous variety of social forms and were far more politically sophisticated and egalitarian than standard accounts assume.
- 4
Buy on AmazonGuns, Germs, and Steel
by Jared Diamond
Diamond's geographic and ecological account of why some civilizations came to dominate others — providing the complementary environmental-determinist framework to Harari's cognitive-fiction-based account of the same question.
- 5
Buy on AmazonThe Human Instinct
by Kenneth R. Miller
A biologist's account of what evolutionary theory actually reveals about human nature — arguing against both social Darwinism and the denial of biology, for a nuanced view of how evolution shaped the species that built civilization.
- 6
Buy on AmazonThe Ascent of Money
by Niall Ferguson
The history of financial innovation — from clay tablets in Mesopotamia to derivative contracts on Wall Street — that provides the detailed account of how money, one of Harari's key shared fictions, actually developed and reshaped human civilization.
- 7
Buy on AmazonEnlightenment Now
by Steven Pinker
Pinker's optimistic account of human progress — using data on violence, poverty, health, and freedom to argue that, despite everything, the Enlightenment values of reason and science have produced extraordinary improvements in human wellbeing — a direct counterpoint to Harari's more ambivalent view.
- 8
Buy on AmazonThe Lessons of History
by Will Durant
A brilliant ninety-page synthesis of patterns across human civilization by the authors of the eleven-volume Story of Civilization — covering the recurring themes of geography, biology, race, morality, religion, economics, and government across all of recorded history.
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