Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind is a book by historian Yuval Noah Harari that explores the history of the human species from the emergence of Homo sapiens in Africa to the present day. The book is divided into four parts, each covering a different period in human history: The Cognitive Revolution, The Agricultural Revolution, The Unification of Humankind, and The Scientific Revolution.

"Hierarchies serve an important function. They enable complete strangers to know how to treat one another without wasting the time and energy needed to become personally acquainted."

While hierarchies are often criticized, they are both natural and helpful structures that can facilitate interactions among people. In my view they are vital to a functioning society as they separate and order by degrees of competence and rewards are distributed accordingly.

"A meaningful life can be extremely satisfying even in the midst of hardship, whereas a meaningless life is a terrible ordeal no matter how comfortable it is."

A  key lesson from the book is the idea that human history is not predetermined or inevitable, but rather the result of a series of choices and decisions made by individuals and groups across the ages. Fundamentally, this means that we have the power to shape our own future, and that the choices we make today will have a significant impact on the world we leave behind for future generations.

Throughout the book, Harari discusses the power of stories in shaping human history. Stories, have an amazing power of  creating "imagined realities" that shape human society. What we consider to be reality is actually based on stories and beliefs that we have collectively agreed upon and accepted as true.

"Large numbers of strangers can cooperate successfully by believing in common myths. Any large-scale human cooperation – whether a modern state, a medieval church, an ancient city or an archaic tribe – is rooted in common myths that exist only in people’s collective imagination."

While often not objectively true, such imagined realities have the ability to unite people and give them a shared sense of identity and purpose. But, this incredible power can be used in unsatisfactory ways. In a business context, this plays out over and over in every bull cycle where the power of stories and the storytellers can often trump hard facts and figures.

One of the biggest my biggest takeaways from this book was the importance of science and technology in shaping human history. The author  discusses how scientific and technological advances have allowed humans to transform their environments, and how they have shaped the way we think and interact with the world around us.

Though he makes the case that during periods of advancement such as the agricultural revolution which, in his own words resulted in:

".. the ability to keep more people alive under worse conditions." 

This may have been true for a time, but much of humanity has moved past this stage and now thrive in an incredible world wrought by our unique capacity to imagine, invent and create.

Overall, I found Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind to be a fascinating and thought-provoking exploration of the history of the human species, offering a number of important lessons about the power of cooperation, the role of storytelling in shaping human history, and the importance of making informed choices about our future.