My habit is to immediately check whether I can get the book on Kindle. We had just finished some nonfiction and we like to alternate so, really, fiction was up next. We tried some fiction and I went on with Sapiens. But it was so well-written that we agreed to switch to it for the sake of the quality and span of the book.
The author makes clear that there have been several branches of the human tree of descent, such as the Cro-Magnon and the Neanderthals. (The Genographic Project of the National Geographic Society analyzed my DNA for $200 and concluded that I am 2% Neanderthal.)
I was not a history fan as I was growing up and going to school. But now, having a feel for what humans have been doing over the last 20,000 or so years is very interesting. Harari says in his TED talk that the ability to believe in "imagined orders", such as army ranks or religious hierarchies or academic ones is a major key enabling humans to cooperate in really large numbers, like thousands or millions or billions, numbers that are much too large to allow all members of the group to know or even meet each other.
The book is divided into four main parts: the cognitive revolution when humans learned language and writing, the agricultural revolution when humans could create a food supply big enough for those really large numbers, the steady unification of all humans by money and other means and the scientific revolution.
The book is filled with wonderful language that captures aspects of our lives very well. He mentions early on the open mind of our young, which enables us to shape them for the family, society and world they are coming into, unlike the relatively finished and set minds and abilities of most of the young animals on earth. This book, like others I have mentioned, pays respect to fire as a tool of animal control and body heat but also as an important contributor to the invention of cooking and therefore brain growth from more complete nutrition in fewer hours of the day.
We are just completing the section on religion. He includes consideration of all religion, from animism of ancient and primitive cultures to special cases such as Communism and liberalism today. He has some wonderful writing on the history and place today of Buddhism and its aims. If you are looking for something that will definitely emphasize your world view of all peoples over all times, this is a good book.
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