This is a very important book, a one stop overview of man’s history from the first evolution of Homo 2.5 million years ago through today’s developments in artificial intelligence, cyborgs, and amortality.  Harari paints with a broad brush which is necessary to get through the 70,000 years relevant to Homo sapiens with its cognitive, agricultural, and scientific revolutions.  The basic message here is that despite the hard wiring of violence, competition, and self-interest, man creates inter-subjective realities through myths which move the world steadily towards unity and a single global entity.  The three forces pushing in that direction over the last 500 years have been money, empire, and religion.  He is ecumenical in crediting India and China with dominance during the first millennium BCE and points out that it was the scientific revolution with its slogan of “ignoramus: we don’t know” that drove the primacy of the European peninsula after 1500.  He is less sanguine about the modern religions of liberalism, nationalism, capitalism, and individualism worrying that the world while healthier, more prosperous, and better for many individuals, is no happier and is more stressful.  Biological science and computers now threaten to eliminate Sapiens as we’ve known him.  Thoughtful, clear, well-written provocative, informative.  This is a fine effort.