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Sapiens: A Brief History Of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari

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    #26
    Originally posted by colinwasp View Post
    I got Sapiens and Homo Deus for Christmas from my step-son. I thought he was being excessively generous until he revealed that they were both on special offer on Amazon for 2.98 each. Haven't looked at the follow-up yet but as the back of Sapiens contains a glowing review by Chris Evans I should have known it wasn't going to be brilliant.
    Mine had a glowing review from Barack Obama!

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      #27
      Originally posted by colinwasp View Post
      I got Sapiens and Homo Deus for Christmas from my step-son. I thought he was being excessively generous until he revealed that they were both on special offer on Amazon for 2.98 each. Haven't looked at the follow-up yet but as the back of Sapiens contains a glowing review by Chris Evans I should have known it wasn't going to be brilliant.
      Does Chris Evans have a Richard and Judy style book club now? Wowzers.

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        #28
        He read the first page in its entirety on his breakfast show apparently. This has swayed it for me. I've ordered something called Before The Dawn by Nicholas Wade instead which will take me from around 50,000-5,000 BCE at which point I'll either search around for something to take me on the next steps in the journey or, more likely, I'll have been side-tracked by something else altogether by then.

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          #29
          Originally posted by Artificial Hipster View Post
          He read the first page in its entirety on his breakfast show apparently. This has swayed it for me. I've ordered something called Before The Dawn by Nicholas Wade instead which will take me from around 50,000-5,000 BCE at which point I'll either search around for something to take me on the next steps in the journey or, more likely, I'll have been side-tracked by something else altogether by then.
          Too Much Partridge, Mr Evans.

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            #30
            So, who knew the past was so controversial? Before the Dawn is a great read for two thirds of it's length. Wade's contention, from studies of the human genome, is that from a population of little more than 5,000 behaviourally modern humans living in east Africa 50,000 years ago a couple of hundred crossed into the near east and went on to populate the rest of the planet. In a similar vain to many of Jared Diamond's books he spins a gripping narrative leading to that critical moment of departure. Things begin to get controversial though when we reach the chapter, 'Race'.

            It's not that he goes all Charles Murray on us as such, though a more recent book of his, A Troublesome Inheritance of which I've read only his own synopsis, would appear to move further in a direction Murray would probably approve. In his chapter on race here Wade spends several pages outlining Jared Diamond's theory that the relative fortunes of the societies which spread across the planet in the last 50,000 years were almost entirely down to the luck of the geographical draw and then dismisses the theory outright on the basis that Diamond, he claims, holds that the 'invention' of agriculture preceded the formation of the first sedentary societies whereas in fact the opposite is true. Well firstly Diamond does acknowledge in Guns Germs & Steel that sedentism preceded agriculture, though this seems to me a minor point anyway. It is beyond ridiculous to hold, as Wade appears to, that the largely superficial differences which natural and sexual selection has wrought in the descendants of those first modern immigrants from Africa should have played a more significant role in their relative fortunes than the vastly different environments they settled in. Not when you've got the Ashkenazi Jews and the fact that Ethiopians are good at long distance running in your corner though.

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