Bookish Thoughts

Homo Deus  is by turns horrific, terrifying, and rage-inducing. It balances this with moments of awe and wonder at all humanity has accomplished and the things we continue to do. Reading this book is like balancing on the knife's edge of despair and optimism. But Harris never quite lets you fall wholly into either emotion. Which means that the book ultimately left me with a weird, unsettled feeling and a whole lot to think about. Harris paints with broad-strokes. He takes the macro view of history, and boy is it macro. Because of that view he makes a lot of sweeping statements and ignores almost all nuance and detail. Sure, he holds up any number of examples, but he never really digs down into the weeds to examine things on a more human level or timescale. A lot of the book is a condensed re-hash of Sapiens , necessary because he's using past trends to inform his predictions about the future. And some of his conclusions didn't sit right with me. Not that I know quite en...

This is the book I wanted The Science of Discworld II: The Globe  to be. It deals with the same material and comes at it from the same perspective, but it's much better organized and more comprehensive, with less of a tendency to wander into the "what if" of it all. Sapeins  is a comprehensive history of humankind, looking at large trends over the existence of our species and mostly glossing over details. Harari focuses on large, sweeping trends in an effort to find larger patterns. He breaks this history down into three revolutions. The cognitive revolution, when humans leaped to the top of the food chain. The agricultural revolution, when we went from hunter/gatherers to farmers and started building cities. And the scientific revolution, when we admitted our ignorance and started making great strides in understanding. The thing that sets us apart from other animals, Harari argues and I find myself agreeing, is our ability to tell stories. To make up fictions and e...