How can we protect ourselves from nuclear war, ecological cataclysms and technological disruptions? What can we do about the epidemic of fake news or the threat of terrorism? What should we teach our children?

Yuval Noah Harari takes us on a thrilling journey through today’s most urgent issues. The golden thread running through his exhilarating new book is the challenge of maintaining our collective and individual focus in the face of constant and disorienting change.

Are we still capable of understanding the world we have created?

Listening Length

11 hours and 41 minutes
Author

Yuval Noah Harari
Narrator

Derek Perkins
Audible release date

30 August 2018
Language

English
Publisher

Penguin Audio
ASIN

B0799RRV42
Version

Unabridged
Program Type

Audiobook
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Product details

Listening Length	11 hours and 41 minutes
Author	Yuval Noah Harari
Narrator	Derek Perkins
Whispersync for Voice	Ready
Audible.com.au Release Date	30 August 2018
Publisher	Penguin Audio
Program Type	Audiobook
Version	Unabridged
Language	English
ASIN	B0799RRV42
Best Sellers Rank	427 in Audible Books & Originals (See Top 100 in Audible Books & Originals) 1 in Sociology of Culture 2 in United States Politics & Government 3 in Political Science (Audible Books & Originals)

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1 star		2%

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Top reviews from Australia

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Fergal McCraken

So disappointing. Very poorly thought out and poory written

Reviewed in Australia on 28 September 2018

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I am a fan of Harari but this is a waste of money and time. I have read both his previous books. Sapiens was brilliant. Homo Deus was fascinating. This one is long winded, strained in thought and logic. I couldn't complete it. Don't bother buying.

12 people found this helpful

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A. SHAUL

Mixed feeling

Reviewed in Australia on 1 July 2019

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I read Yuva's first two books and loved them. This one I'm not sure of. Felt like some sort of personal agenda and quite subjective. Does bring good points to think about but didn't feel like I got much from it, at least compared with the first books that I found intriguing.

7 people found this helpful

Helpful

Clues and signposts for deep and valuable conversations and therefore better decisions

Reviewed in Australia on 12 November 2018

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It struck me while studying this book that a key to the peaceful survival and thriving of the human race is the need for more deeper conversations and then better decisions that aren't based on imagined realities.

Of the 21 conversation topics in this book I particularly valued those on equality, community, immigration, humility, secularism, truth, meaning and meditation.

Plenty here to enrich my ongoing conversations with my clients, colleagues, friends and family.

Perhaps the big topic will be from a line about three quarters of the way into the book "The big question facing humans isn't 'what is the meaning of life?' but rather, 'how do we get out of suffering?"

3 people found this helpful

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Russell Stewart

Secularity

Reviewed in Australia on 17 March 2020

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The chapter on people who have secular beliefs is the most worth while chapter in the book. Rather than a secular outlook being somehow empty, it can include an entirely moral outlook, often sharing ideas drawn from other religions, but without having to accept beliefs that are just, to put it politely, not credible.

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Arun.D

Something to think about!

Reviewed in Australia on 21 July 2020

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This is a good read; I felt at the start of the book it was a bit generic; but stuck to it and found some good insite. I must admit the ease at which he moves from one chapter topic to the next linking each topic while making sense is pretty impressive. Definitely something to understand and think about. The book itself had a bit of print damage when i got it; but good quality.

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Amazon Customer

Ok, but repetitive and with blindspots

Reviewed in Australia on 24 November 2020

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This book had some good insights. However, it largely repeated the ideas from Harari's previous texts (such as the excellent "sapiens"). It was quite optimistic and boarderline techno utopian. I also think that inadequately considered the climate crisis and non linear threats.

One person found this helpful

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David JH

Who is this for?

Reviewed in Australia on 20 March 2019

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It's a long, train-of-thought, listicle of pressing topics but only offers brief yet thought-provoking overviews. I'm not sure of the target audience of this book.

3 people found this helpful

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Nils uellendahl

Insight

Reviewed in Australia on 19 October 2019

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A fantastic insight into one possible future, every homo sapiens should read this. The future is not set, neither are humans, it is the decisions we make today that affect everyone in the future and using the information from this book may change the way we think.

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Top reviews from other countries

Hande Z

Eternal lessons

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 16 September 2018

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Harari’s first two books, ‘Sapiens’, ‘and ‘Homo Deus’ have been critically acclaimed, and one wonders what else can he come up with. This question is normally asked of fiction writers, but Harari’s first two books have been so tremendously popular to the extent that they were likened to best-selling novels. This, his third book, does not disappoint.

It is a book of 21 essays on different subjects beginning with ‘Disillusionment’, ‘Work’, ‘Liberty’, and ‘Equality’ under Part I, entitled, ‘The Technological Challenge’. The book has a total of five Parts. The other four are: ‘The Political Challenge’, Despair and Hope’, Truth’, and ‘Resilience’.

Harari’s thoughts spring from the basic, but important question, ‘What can we say about the meaning of life today?’ In order to put the age-old question into the context of today, Harari examines the scientific and cultural changes that have transformed human societies across the world. One major change wrought by technology is the phenomenon in which we get increasingly distanced from our own bodies, and are being absorbed into smartphones and computers.

Harari shows how ‘benign patriotism’ can so easily be transformed into ultra-nationalism; form the belief that ‘My nation is unique’ (every nation is) to ‘My nation is supreme’. Once we get to that, war and strife is, frighteningly, just a step away. He devotes a chapter each to ‘immigration’ and ‘terrorism’ because these are the two bogeymen of the world – not just the Western world. Harari fears that when New York or London eventually sinks below the Atlantic Ocean, people will be blaming Bush, Blair and Obama for focussing on the wrong front.

Given the undertones of religious conflicts and differences in the wars that an American-led West had inflicted on various parts of the world, Harari had much to say in his chapters on ‘God’ and ‘Secularism’. He tries to show how irrational belief in a personal God is. ‘Science cannot explain the “Big Bang”, they exclaim, “so that must be God’s doing”…After giving the name of “God” to the unknown secrets of the cosmos, they then use this to somehow condemn bikinis and divorces’. Not to mention abortion, eating pork, and drinking beer. What does it mean ‘Not to use the name of God in vain’? Harari suggests that it should mean that ‘we should never use the name of God to justify our political interests, our economic ambitions or our personal hatred’. He exposes the problems of dogmatism, and warns against the illusion that the falsity in one’s creed or ideology will never be allowed to happen. ‘if you believe in an absolute truth revealed in a transcendent power’, he writes, ‘you cannot allow yourself to admit any error – for that would nullify your whole story. But if you believe in a quest for truth by fallible humans, admitting blunders is an inherent part of the game’.

Harari’s conclusion is a treat to read and has much to commend in the way he reconciles religious beliefs and rational thinking. Humans love story-telling, he writes, and the answers to the question, ‘what is the meaning of life?’ lie in the stories – but we do not have just one story each. And this is crucial. We not just a Muslim, or an Italian, or a capitalist. We do not have just one identity as a human. And we have many stories. We must not shut them out for the sake of one favourite.

181 people found this helpful

Anurag Tiwari

Pirated! Bad paper! Don't buy!

Reviewed in India on 12 October 2018

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Basically, they are giving pirated third class paper quality version. This is expected from Flipkart but not Amazon.
People might argue that expectations should be low for a low price, but I say that the Big discounts displayed on products should also be according to similar quality stuff, and not the original publication.

196 people found this helpful

Richard Ellis

He's done the past and the future - now it's the turn of the present

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 23 September 2018

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Unlike Sapiens (about the past) and Homo Deus (the future), 21 Lessons for the 21st Century is a series of commentaries, thoughts and meditations on the present. Some of the main themes are ones which readers of the earlier books will be familiar with – for example, how what separates man from our ape cousins is our ability to believe in and live by stories. We are able to believe in things (religion, democracy, money) which have no objective reality or independent existence, or be part of communities (nations, corporations, online) of people we don’t know. A historian, polymath, atheist and cynic, Harari is capable of insights of dazzling simplicity yet which are backed by deep reading and thought. Here are just a few, taken out of context but I promise it’s worth following up the context:

The revolutions in biotech and infotech are made by engineers, entrepreneurs and scientists who are hardly aware of the political implications of their decisions…

Donald Trump warned voters that the Mexicans and Chinese will take their jobs, and that they should therefore build a wall on the Mexican border. He never warned voters that algorithms will take their jobs, nor did he suggest building a firewall on the border with California.

Humans have two abilities – physical and cognitive. The former have been partly supplemented by machines. Artificial Intelligence is challenging the latter…. Communism has no answer to automation, as the masses lose their economic value and become irrelevant.

Artificial Intelligence and human stupidity – if we concentrate too much on AI and not enough on human consciousness, AI will end up merely empowering the stupidity of humans.

Globalisation has resulted in growing inequality – the richest 100 own more than poorest 4 billion – and might in time lead to speciation. [People and species are opposite - species split, whereas people coalesce into larger groups, though mergers change.] Challenges are now supra-national – there are no national solutions to global warming. Nations have no answer to technological disruption. The nationalist wave [which he attributes in some measure to nostalgia] cannot turn the clock back to 1939 or 1914. Europe is a good example of supra-national solutions [he thinks Brexit is a bad idea]. Early humans faced problems which local tribes couldn’t handle (for example, Nile floods). Nowadays problems are supra-national.

Most stories are held together by the weight of their roof rather than by the strength of their foundations. Consider the Christian story. It has the flimsiest of foundations…. Yet enormous global institutions have been built on top of that story, and their weight presses down with such overwhelming force that they keep the story in place.

This is another intellectual tour de force from Harari, though as other reviewers have said it’s essential to have read the other two books first.

91 people found this helpful

Buyer

Important point of view of the global context. (However poor quality of print)

Reviewed in India on 24 September 2018

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Essential reading. Quality of ideas, opinions and writing in line with his earlier books.

A note to Penguin and its imprints. Please stop printing with Replika. The quality of print is abysmal and this is the second such experience for me (Devlok 2). I know of others who have felt the same. If this continues, readers will complain in droves and/or stop buying your books printed with Replika. So change the quality of printing or the Press in question.

118 people found this helpful

Raluca

Utter garbage

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 26 December 2019

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I had to stop reading a quarter In the book as I could not bear finishing it. This is utter garbage, biased opinions without any scientific back up narrated in the most condescending tone. I m glad I haven’t read his other 2 book as I can imagine they are similar

29 people found this helpful

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21 Lessons for the 21st Century Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

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