Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind This book is poor. Other reviewers have highlighted fatal logical and content flaws. Personally, I have stopped reading the book halfway through because I spent more time commenting than reading. Some of the ideas presented were new and interesting to me, but whenever I had done some previous reading on topic this book seemed at best more shallow, generally uncritically partisan and at worst flat out wrong. Most of the opinions (consistently, and annoingly, always presented as facts) are presented without supporting evidence. The general impression is of recycling history fads - other reviewers have argued that they are even outdated, though I cannot say this not being my field. Basically, the author argues that progress is bad (at least the Agriculture Revolution is a great evil), the life of hunter-gatherers was idyllic, and men are the victims of forces they barely understand, and in turn they are the tormentors of nature. Indeed, this is partially true. However, one is annoyed to be revealed first that wheat has enslaved men for its ends (a bit too simplistic,perhaps?) as proven by the broad distribution aquired by Triticum as conseguence of domestication, and a few pages later to find out that cows, pigs and hens are not treated the same way, and in that case humans are not passive instruments of the evolutionary strategies of those animals, but rather cruel creatures that have led wild animals into suffering. In fact, I agree that the fate of domesticated animals is often sad or tragic, but if wheat manipulated humans, so did pigs or chickens, giving us - it seems - a range of diseases. Or perhaps reality is more nuanced? On another level, I think that the lifestyle of hunter-gathers has been rightly receiving more appreciation in recent years, and, with some doubts, I accept the idea that farmers - at least some farmers - had a worse time than their free-ranging predecessors. However, this book transform these concepts into "received wisdom/fad" that I do not like. Even books for the general public (J. Diamond's) show that hunter-gatherers are not a uniform lot, and, compared to farmers or us, have some advantages (some of them, some of the time) but also some disadvantages (say, infanticide, violent deaths, incidents, short life-spans, etc). Significantly even today some hunters (Aka pygmyes, as reported by Diamond in "The World Until Yesterda") switch to farming, as they see advantages, even when the livelihoods of farmers they know are those of Central Africa, not those of Nebraska. Moreover, contrary to the author's claims, some populations did go back to hunting and gathering. My historical readings concerning farmers in Ancient Greece, in Roman Italy or in the Middle Ages - though I am not a scholar - suggest that their lives were sometimes truly miserable, but by no means at all times. Again, the picture is probably very nuanced, varies with time and place, culture, etc. In fact, one always wonders how solid is the archaelogical evidence on the misfortunes of farmers - which proponents rarely present and question. And, yes, our lives require more scheduling, and less social bonds, than those of Piraha Indians, but we don't have to let our women and babies die when delivery gets difficult - which surely ranks as a benefit. Farmers also did their share of hunting (when they could) and gathering, and knew their land (and I don't think hunter-gatherers could really roam freely beyond their environment, or cross, bar exceptions, into other tribes' territories, so farming was not a totally new limitation even in this sense). It does not take a scholar to realise that generalisations in this context require lots of information, data, knowledge, and much caution. If you feel our world is bad AND simple, and you need an rational-sounding explanation for that opinion, while feeling smarter than the rest of us (you are just a slave of bread, and you don't even admit it!), then go for it. On the other hand, if you like facts, understand the limitations of any type of research, if you enjoy humble but clever attempts to explain history, and believe that the world is quite mixed and really complex, save your money for something better.