I’ll be honest — Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari took me five years to complete. My actual reading time was two months, but I consumed 50% of the book within the last two weeks — prior to that were simply phases where I waited for myself to grow into it. It wasn’t because I didn’t enjoy it; it’s because this book is a vessel of information overload. You learn so much that you end up struggling to retain even half of it.
Even now, I carry away only fragments: glimpses of civilizations, revolutions, the evolution of humankind, and the many economic systems we’ve built and left behind. It’s not a book you can fully absorb in one go. Sapiens feels like the kind of book you revisit over the years, returning to certain chapters whenever curiosity nudges you back.
The Reading Journey That Evolved Me
If you look at my copy of Sapiens, you’ll see a literal timeline and demarcation of my own cognitive growth. Half the pages are tabbed in yellow and pink from 2021–2023, the rest are tabbed in blue from 2025. Back in 2021, I had just realized that I had the memory of a goldfish. No matter how much I loved a book, the details slipped away the moment I closed it — except Bollywood dialogues and brain-rot song lyrics, those manage to stay in my head rent-free forever.
So, this book witnessed my metamorphosis — from being a non-annotator to a cautious highlighter, and eventually to a full-blown annotator who writes in the margins like she’s co-authoring. In a way, Sapiens didn’t just teach me about human evolution; it documented my own evolution as a reader.
What Sapiens Tries to Teach Us, According To Me
Harari attempts something monumental — to tell the story of humankind in one volume. He traces our journey from the Cognitive Revolution to the Agricultural Revolution, from tribal societies to the unification of humankind, through imagined realities like religion, money, and success. Then he explores colonialism, capitalism, and scientific progress, raising questions that stay with you long after you finish reading.
What stood out most to me, though, were the ideas that connect the big sweep of human history with the small details of everyday life:
1. The Power of Imagined Realities
Harari suggests that society runs on shared stories: money, religion, companies, nations. These things exist because we all agree to believe in them. It’s fascinating, and maybe a little unsettling, to realize how much of life is built on ideas we’ve all decided to share.
2. Gender, Culture, and Identity
The book also dives into how gender isn’t just biological but deeply cultural. Harari explains how societies invented imagined hierarchies and roles to sustain power structures, leading to centuries of inequality and objectification. It also made me reflect on how often we still perform our genders to be “enough” — feminine enough, masculine enough, and acceptable enough in society.
3. Capitalism, Greed, and Modern Happiness
One of the book’s more memorable arguments is that capitalism, once a system of survival, has evolved into an ideology of desire. Harari connects romanticism with consumerism — how the pursuit of “experiences” fuels tourism, lifestyle industries, and even our metrics of self-worth. It’s uncomfortably accurate.
4. Meaning, Death, and the Future
Towards the end, Harari explores whether death gives life meaning, referring briefly to the Gilgamesh Project, and also talks about whether technology might someday make us “gods.” The idea that progress could outpace purpose is equally inspiring and unsettling.
Where the Book Falters, According To Me
Up until the final chapters, Sapiens maintains an objective and informative tone. But something shifts when Harari begins discussing the collapse of the family and community systems. Suddenly, his writing tone moves from observation to persuasion.
He suggests that people were happier when they didn’t have the freedom to reject societal norms — that being “dictated to” made life simpler. This struck me as troubling for two reasons:
First, it felt like a philosophical overreach. Harari, as a historian, isn’t qualified to prescribe psychological truths about happiness. The argument should have been a product of competence, and not opinionated nostalgia.
Second, it implies hypocritical acceptance of the book. The idea that losing control might make us happier feels misaligned with everything that the book celebrates — like human curiosity, adaptability, and progress.
It’s a small section, but it changes the tone enough to stand out. Until then, Harari informs; here, he influences. And that shift — from storytelling to subtle moralizing — diluted the otherwise even-handed brilliance of the book for me.
Reading Sapiens in Today’s Age
Beyond its academic reach, Sapiens also an observation of how we process knowledge today. It’s dense, layered, and always asking for your attention, much like our digital lives. Maybe that’s why it feels both relatable and a little exhausting at the same time.
Watching critical reviews like The Dead Man’s Dentist on YouTube after finishing helped me re-evaluate my own interpretations. I realized that engaging with a book like this isn’t just about agreement; it’s about building a dialogue with the author, with history, and with yourself.
Final Thoughts
Finishing Sapiens felt less like closing a great conversation about who we are and where we’re headed as humans. It’s the kind of read that humbles you as a person — not just because it tells you what to think, but because it reminds you of how little we truly understand.
If you plan to read it, don’t rush. Treat it like a reference manual for humankind. Annotate freely, re-read when you need to, and don’t panic if you forget. Because maybe that’s the point — evolution isn’t about remembering everything. It’s about learning how to think differently each time you return.
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