Barack Obama and Bill Gates have undergone that experience, as have many others in the Davos crowd and Silicon Valley. It’s one of those books that can’t help but make you feel smarter for having read it. People shouldn’t be focused on the question of how to stop technological progress because this is impossible Perhaps, but it is an intellectual joy to be swept along. Although Sapiens has been widely and loudly praised, some critics have suggested that it is too sweeping. It is a dazzlingly bold introduction, which the remainder of the book lives up to on almost every page. In grippingly lucid prose, Harari sets out on that first page a condensed history of the universe, followed by a summary of the book’s thesis: how the cognitive revolution, the agricultural revolution and the scientific revolution have affected humans and their fellow organisms.
The subtitle of Sapiens, in an echo of Stephen Hawking’s great work, is A Brief History of Humankind. If DJs are prone to mindless hyperbole, this was an honourable exception. But as Evans said, “the first page is the most stunning first page of any book”. Given that radio audiences at that time in the morning are not known for their appetite for intellectual engagement – the previous segment had dealt with Gary Barlow’s new tour – it was an unusual gesture.
L ast week, on his Radio 2 breakfast show, Chris Evans read out the first page of Sapiens, the book by the Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari.
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