Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This book is reminiscent of The Sixth Extinction, and somewhat of The Singularity is Near, and also of Guns Germs and Steel.
I particularly like how the author creates the framework of shared belief systems, and collects not just shared rules for games, but also shared beliefs in religion, shared policies in government, and most importantly, shared principles for money, the only universally shared belief system.
The author also goes through the rise of agriculture, the importance of fictions and myths in sustaining shared beliefs. He posits that human cooperation allowed the extinction of competing primates, and that humans are in the process of upgrading to gods.
Thought provoking.
