book / recommends
Sapiens
“I really love narrative nonfiction, so I like the Eric Larson books. They're a very compelling and page turning way to learn about history. I recently read Devil in the White City and there was also one about Churchill's first year by Eric Larson. Another book that just the canonical book that I often recommend is Sapiens. I think he's a great example of what we talk about when we talk about simplifiers. He took a very complex subject, which is all of human history and tried to pull out the nuggets. I think his thesis that what differentiates humans from other forms of life is really our ability to tell and believe in myths or stories, and he cites money and religion as examples, but also there's a graphic novel version of Sapiens and so he almost has the PhD level and then he literally has the high school level, which is a graphic novel version. He also has Unstoppable Us, which I think is a kid's version, and so clearly here is someone who is a master. There's a James Clear thing that a friend, Shirley, told me about where it's like if you're a beginner, you have ignorant simplicity and intermediate has functional complexity, and then a master of a topic has profound simplicity. And that's what I feel like Noah Yuval Harari really has because he can go all the way up and down this cool pyramid in terms of explaining this really complex topic.”