Acceptable- Readable Copy. 100% money back guarantee. Ships same day from Amazon's warehouse with tracking, 24/7 customer service and no-hassle returns. May qualify for free same-day delivery, Prime Two-Day Shipping and/or free standard shipping. Your purchase directly supports local non-profits. Acceptable- Readable Copy. 100% money back guarantee. Ships same day from Amazon's warehouse with tracking, 24/7 customer service and no-hassle returns. May qualify for free same-day delivery, Prime Two-Day Shipping and/or free standard shipping. Your purchase directly supports local non-profits. See less

FREE delivery Saturday, June 28 on orders shipped by Amazon over $35

Or fastest delivery Friday, June 27. Order within 5 hrs 6 mins

Only 1 left in stock - order soon.

$$22.70 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details

Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items.

Enhancements you chose aren't available for this seller. Details

${cardName} not available for the seller you chose

${cardName} unavailable for quantities greater than ${maxQuantity}.

Sold by LuxuryMerchandise (Veteran Owned) and Fulfilled by Amazon.

Other sellers on Amazon

New & Used (169) from $2.34

Image Unavailable

Image not available for
Color:

To view this video download Flash Player

Follow the author

Yuval Noah Harari

Follow

21 Lessons for the 21st Century Hardcover – September 4, 2018

by Yuval Noah Harari (Author)

19,719 ratings

Editors' pick Best History

See all formats and editions

{"desktop_buybox_group_1":[{"displayPrice":"$22.70","priceAmount":22.70,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"22","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"70","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"T6V5WdyvPeBAzDpaY9Rh%2B1SaSz0htJ0Mi%2BvsfCQLahzNuRMHRXeIpRudwf4%2F8gAMXWZvoFTf4CSEOeF1CNSP3AroEvB4Cpu75noetKgfFOyDH94zXXLkVGokKnLyKWofjLW8Bvh3FV%2FT%2F26wOqWkwxMf4wsgOOt1HedOvGf4%2BCMXL7y5ODz1RfGaxp6cdM1C","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"NEW","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":0}, {"displayPrice":"$9.95","priceAmount":9.95,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"9","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"95","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"T6V5WdyvPeBAzDpaY9Rh%2B1SaSz0htJ0MOiqrf7wGz9sTETs5J6rktxCPX3sQdbJRHIpZg0FfE6exFkK31vEuGEU0V7tagBP158WTORfqOJREcaDi%2BjT8juE6KXIM9zEi5zNmbQ4JayFrq3Xwv8UfYETeMsFLNzTGE8ox%2FaU%2Fw2MXNSZzxePUup1j31TZDJ5l","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"USED","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":1}]}

Purchase options and add-ons

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • In Sapiens, he explored our past. In Homo Deus, he looked to our future. Now, one of the world’s most innovative thinkers explores what it means to be human in an age of bewilderment.

“Fascinating . . . a crucial global conversation about how to take on the problems of the twenty-first century.”—Bill Gates, The New York Times Book Review

A FINANCIAL TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

How can we protect ourselves from nuclear war or ecological catastrophe? What do we do about the epidemic of fake news or the threat of terrorism? How should we prepare our children for the future?

21 Lessons for the 21st Century is a probing and visionary investigation into today’s most urgent issues as we move into the future. As technology advances faster than our understanding of it, hacking becomes a tactic of war, and the world feels more polarized than ever, Harari addresses the challenge of navigating life in the face of constant and disorienting change and raises the important questions we need to ask ourselves in order to survive.

In twenty-one accessible chapters that are both provocative and profound, Harari untangles political, technological, social, and existential issues and offers advice on how to prepare for a very different future from the world we now live in: How can we retain freedom of choice when Big Data is watching us? What will the future workforce look like, and how should we ready ourselves for it? Why is liberal democracy in crisis?

Harari’s unique ability to make sense of where we have come from and where we are going has captured the imaginations of millions of readers. Here he invites us to consider values, meaning, and personal engagement in a world full of noise and uncertainty. When we are deluged with irrelevant information, clarity is power. Presenting complex contemporary challenges clearly and accessibly, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century is essential reading.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

An Amazon Best Book of September 2018: It’s hard to imagine having as many deep thoughts as Yuval Noah Harari. His 2015 book, Sapiens, examined the human race through the vectors of history and biology, illuminating how each has influenced our behavior and evolution. Two years later, Homo Deus took us in the opposite direction, predicting the profound changes we will undergo as technology becomes increasingly intertwined in our lives and bodies. Just a year and a half later, Harari turns his attention to more immediate concerns. Using the same tack-sharp lens as his previous books, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century addresses urgent, shape-shifting topics that will shape our present and near future, including nationalism, religion, immigration, artificial intelligence, and even the nature of Truth—in other words, everything you're not supposed to talk about at Thanksgiving. Harari is not always reassuring, and he's certainly unafraid of questions challenging widely held views on both global and personal scales, i.e. yours. His quest is not to tear holes in belief systems, but to expand conversations and strip the -isms that channel us into predictably intractable stand-offs. Calling any book "urgent" or "a must-read" is almost always hyperbolic, even shrill. But especially now, 21 Lessons fits the bill. —Jon Foro, Amazon Book Review

Review

“The human mind wants to worry. This is not necessarily a bad thing—after all, if a bear is stalking you, worrying about it may well save your life. Although most of us don’t need to lose too much sleep over bears these days, modern life does present plenty of other reasons for concern: terrorism, climate change, the rise of A.I., encroachments on our privacy, even the apparent decline of international cooperation. In his fascinating new book, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, the historian Yuval Noah Harari creates a useful framework for confronting these fears. While his previous best sellers, Sapiens and Homo Deus, covered the past and future respectively, his new book is all about the present. The trick for putting an end to our anxieties, he suggests, is not to stop worrying. It’s to know which things to worry about, and how much to worry about them. . . . Harari is such a stimulating writer that even when I disagreed, I wanted to keep reading and thinking. . . . [Harari] has teed up a crucial global conversation about how to take on the problems of the twenty-first century.”—Bill Gates, The New York Times Book Review

“If there were such a thing as a required instruction manual for politicians and thought leaders, Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari’s 21 Lessons for the 21st Century would deserve serious consideration. In this collection of provocative essays, Harari, author of the critically praised Sapiens and Homo Deus, tackles a daunting array of issues, endeavoring to answer a persistent question: ‘What is happening in the world today, and what is the deep meaning of these events?’ . . . Harari makes a passionate argument for reshaping our educational systems and replacing our current emphasis on quickly outdated substantive knowledge with the ‘four Cs’—critical thinking, communication, collaboration and creativity. . . . Thoughtful readers will find 21 Lessons for the 21st Century to be a mind-expanding experience.”—BookPage (top pick)

“A sobering and tough-minded perspective on bewildering new vistas.”—Booklist (starred review)

“Magnificently combining historical, scientific, political, and philosophical perspectives, Harari . . . explores twenty-one of what he considers to be today’s ‘greatest challenges.’ Despite the title’s reference to ‘lessons,’ his tone is not prescriptive but exploratory, seeking to provoke debate without offering definitive solutions. . . . Within this broad construct, Harari discusses many pressing issues, including problems associated with liberal democracy, nationalism, immigration, and religion. This well-informed and searching book is one to be savored and widely discussed.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“A highly instructive exploration of ‘current affairs and . . . the immediate future of human societies.’ Having produced an international bestseller about human origins and avoided the sophomore jinx writing about our destiny, Harari proves that he has not lost his touch, casting a brilliantly insightful eye on today’s myriad crises, from Trump to terrorism, Brexit to big data. . . . [In] twenty-one painfully astute essays, he delivers his take on where our increasingly ‘post-truth’ world is headed. Human ingenuity, which enables us to control the outside world, may soon re-engineer our insides, extend life, and guide our thoughts. Science-fiction movies get the future wrong, if only because they have happy endings. Most readers will find Harari’s narrative deliciously reasonable, including his explanation of the stories (not actually true but rational) of those who elect dictators, populists, and nationalists. His remedies for wildly disruptive technology (biotech, infotech) and its consequences (climate change, mass unemployment) ring true, provided nations act with more good sense than they have shown throughout history. Harari delivers yet another tour de force.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

About the Author

Professor Yuval Noah Harari is a historian, philosopher, and the bestselling author of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, and the series Sapiens: A Graphic History and Unstoppable Us. His books have sold forty-five million copies in sixty-five languages, and he is considered one of the world’s most influential public intellectuals working today. Born in Israel in 1976, Harari received his Ph.D. from the University of Oxford in 2002 and is currently a lecturer at the Department of History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He co-founded the social impact company Sapienship, focused on education and media, with his husband Itzik Yahav.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

1

Disillusionment

The End of History Has Been Postponed

Humans think in stories rather than in facts, numbers, or equations, and the simpler the story, the better. Every person, group, and nation has its own tales and myths. But during the twentieth century the global elites in New York, London, Berlin, and Moscow formulated three grand stories that claimed to explain the whole past and to predict the future of the entire world: the fascist story, the communist story, and the liberal story. The Second World War knocked out the fascist story, and from the late 1940s to the late 1980s the world became a battleground between just two stories: communism and liberalism. Then the communist story collapsed, and the liberal story remained the dominant guide to the human past and the indispensable manual for the future of the world—or so it seemed to the global elite.

The liberal story celebrates the value and power of liberty. It says that for thousands of years humankind lived under oppressive regimes that allowed people few political rights, economic opportunities, or personal liberties, and which heavily restricted the movements of individuals, ideas, and goods. But people fought for their freedom, and step by step, liberty gained ground. Democratic regimes took the place of brutal dictatorships. Free enterprise overcame economic restrictions. People learned to think for themselves and follow their hearts instead of blindly obeying bigoted priests and hidebound traditions. Open roads, wide bridges, and bustling airports replaced walls, moats, and barbed-wire fences.

The liberal story acknowledges that not all is well in the world and that there are still many hurdles to overcome. Much of our planet is dominated by tyrants, and even in the most liberal countries many citizens suffer from poverty, violence, and oppression. But at least we know what we need to do in order to overcome these problems: give people more liberty. We need to protect human rights, grant everybody the vote, establish free markets, and let individuals, ideas, and goods move throughout the world as easily as possible. According to this liberal panacea—accepted, in slight variations, by George W. Bush and Barack Obama alike—if we just continue to liberalize and globalize our political and economic systems, we will produce peace and prosperity for all.1

Countries that join this unstoppable march of progress will be rewarded with peace and prosperity sooner. Countries that try to resist the inevitable will suffer the consequences until they too see the light, open their borders, and liberalize their societies, their politics, and their markets. It may take time, but eventually even North Korea, Iraq, and El Salvador will look like Denmark or Iowa.

In the 1990s and 2000s this story became a global mantra. Many governments from Brazil to India adopted liberal recipes in an attempt to join the inexorable march of history. Those failing to do so seemed like fossils from a bygone era. In 1997 U.S. president Bill Clinton confidently rebuked the Chinese government, stating that its refusal to liberalize Chinese politics put it “on the wrong side of history.”2

However, since the global financial crisis of 2008 people all over the world have become increasingly disillusioned with the liberal story. Walls and firewalls are back in vogue. Resistance to immigration and to trade agreements is mounting. Ostensibly democratic governments undermine the independence of the judiciary system, restrict the freedom of the press, and portray any opposition as treason. Strongmen in countries such as Turkey and Russia experiment with new types of illiberal democracies and outright dictatorships. Today, few would confidently declare that the Chinese Communist Party is on the wrong side of history.

The year 2016—marked by the Brexit vote in Britain and the rise of Donald Trump in the United States—signified the moment when this tidal wave of disillusionment reached the core liberal states of Western Europe and North America. Whereas a few years ago Americans and Europeans were still trying to liberalize Iraq and Libya at gunpoint, many people in Kentucky and Yorkshire now have come to see the liberal vision as either undesirable or unattainable. Some discovered a liking for the old hierarchical world, and they just don’t want to give up their racial, national, or gendered privileges. Others have concluded (rightly or wrongly) that liberalization and globalization are a huge racket empowering a tiny elite at the expense of the masses.

In 1938 humans were offered three global stories to choose from, in 1968 just two, and in 1998 a single story seemed to prevail. In 2018 we are down to zero. No wonder that the liberal elites, who dominated much of the world in recent decades, are in a state of shock and disorientation. To have one story is the most reassuring situation of all. Everything is perfectly clear. To be suddenly left without any story is terrifying. Nothing makes any sense. A bit like the Soviet elite in the 1980s, liberals don’t understand how history deviated from its preordained course, and they lack an alternative prism through which to interpret reality. Disorientation causes them to think in apocalyptic terms, as if the failure of history to come to its envisioned happy ending can only mean that it is hurtling toward Armageddon. Unable to conduct a reality check, the mind latches onto catastrophic scenarios. Like a person imagining that a bad headache signifies a terminal brain tumor, many liberals fear that Brexit and the rise of Donald Trump portend the end of human civilization.

From Killing Mosquitoes to Killing Thoughts

Our sense of disorientation and impending doom is exacerbated by the accelerating pace of technological disruption. The liberal political system was shaped during the industrial era to manage a world of steam engines, oil refineries, and television sets. It has difficulty dealing with the ongoing revolutions in information technology and biotechnology.

Both politicians and voters are barely able to comprehend the new technologies, let alone regulate their explosive potential. Since the 1990s the internet has changed the world probably more than any other factor, yet the internet revolution was directed by engineers more than by political parties. Did you ever vote about the internet? The democratic system is still struggling to understand what hit it, and it is unequipped to deal with the next shocks, such as the rise of AI and the blockchain revolution.

Already today, computers have made the financial system so complicated that few humans can understand it. As AI improves, we might soon reach a point when no human can make sense of finance anymore. What will that do to the political process? Can you imagine a government that waits humbly for an algorithm to approve its budget or its new tax reform? Meanwhile, peer-to-peer blockchain networks and cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin might completely revamp the monetary system, making radical tax reforms inevitable. For example, it might become impossible or irrelevant to calculate and tax incomes in dollars, because most transactions will not involve a clear-cut exchange of national currency, or any currency at all. Governments might therefore need to invent entirely new taxes—perhaps a tax on information (which will be both the most important asset in the economy and the only thing exchanged in numerous transactions). Will the political system manage to deal with the crisis before it runs out of money?

Even more important, the twin revolutions in infotech and biotech could restructure not just economies and societies but our very bodies and minds. In the past, we humans learned to control the world outside us, but we had very little control over the world inside us. We knew how to build a dam and stop a river from flowing, but we did not know how to stop the body from aging. We knew how to design an irrigation system, but we had no idea how to design a brain. If a mosquito buzzed in our ear and disturbed our sleep, we knew how to kill the mosquito, but if a thought buzzed in our mind and kept us awake at night, most of us did not know how to kill the thought.

The revolutions in biotech and infotech will give us control of the world inside us and will enable us to engineer and manufacture life. We will learn how to design brains, extend lives, and kill thoughts at our discretion. Nobody knows what the consequences will be. Humans were always far better at inventing tools than using them wisely. It is easier to manipulate a river by building a dam than it is to predict all the complex consequences this will have for the wider ecological system. Similarly, it will be easier to redirect the flow of our minds than to divine what that will do to our personal psychology or to our social systems.

In the past, we gained the power to manipulate the world around us and reshape the entire planet, but because we didn’t understand the complexity of the global ecology, the changes we made inadvertently disrupted the entire ecological system, and now we face an ecological collapse. In the coming century biotech and infotech will give us the power to manipulate the world inside us and reshape ourselves, but because we don’t understand the complexity of our own minds, the changes we will make might upset our mental system to such an extent that it too might break down.

The revolutions in biotech and infotech are currently being started by engineers, entrepreneurs, and scientists who are hardly aware of the political implications of their decisions, and who certainly don’t represent anyone. Can parliaments and political parties take matters into their own hands? At present it does not seem so. Technological disruption is not even a leading item on the political agenda. During the 2016 U.S. presidential race, the main reference to disruptive technology concerned Hillary Clinton’s email debacle, and despite all the talk about job loss, neither candidate addressed the potential impact of automation.3 Donald Trump warned voters that the Mexicans and Chinese would take their jobs, and that they should therefore build a wall on the Mexican border.4 He never warned voters that algorithms would take their jobs, nor did he suggest building a firewall on the border with California.

This might be one of the reasons (though not the only one) voters even in the heartlands of the liberal West are losing faith in the liberal story and in the democratic process. Ordinary people may not understand artificial intelligence and biotechnology, but they can sense that the future is passing them by. In 1938 the condition of the common person in the USSR, Germany, or the United States may have been grim, but he was constantly told that he was the most important thing in the world, and that he was the future (provided, of course, that he was an “ordinary person” rather than a Jew or an African). He looked at the propaganda posters—which typically depicted coal miners, steelworkers, and housewives in heroic poses—and saw himself there: “I am in that poster! I am the hero of the future!”5

In 2018 the common person feels increasingly irrelevant. Lots of mysterious words are bandied around excitedly in TED Talks, government think tanks, and high-tech conferences—globalization, blockchain, genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, machine learning—and common people may well suspect that none of these words are about them. The liberal story was the story of ordinary people. How can it remain relevant to a world of cyborgs and networked algorithms?

In the twentieth century, the masses revolted against exploitation and sought to translate their vital role in the economy into political power. Now the masses fear irrelevance, and they are frantic to use their remaining political power before it is too late. Brexit and the rise of Trump might therefore demonstrate a trajectory opposite to that of traditional socialist revolutions. The Russian, Chinese, and Cuban revolutions were made by people who were vital to the economy but who lacked political power; in 2016, Trump and Brexit were supported by many people who still enjoyed political power but who feared that they were losing their economic worth. Perhaps in the twenty-first century populist revolts will be staged not against an economic elite that exploits people but against an economic elite that does not need them anymore.6 This may well be a losing battle. It is much harder to struggle against irrelevance than against exploitation.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Random House
Publication date ‏ : ‎ September 4, 2018
Edition ‏ : ‎ First Edition
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Print length ‏ : ‎ 400 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0525512179
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0525512172
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.23 x 1.23 x 9.53 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #77,938 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #17 in Cultural Anthropology (Books)
- #77 in Politics & Government (Books)
- #5,549 in Literary Fiction (Books)

Customer Reviews:
19,719 ratings

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Videos

Help others learn more about this product by uploading a video!

Upload your video

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

Yuval Noah Harari

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Prof. Yuval Noah Harari (born 1976) is a historian, philosopher and the bestselling author of 'Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind' (2014); 'Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow' (2016); '21 Lessons for the 21st Century' (2018); the children's series 'Unstoppable Us' (launched in 2022); and 'Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI' (2024). He is also the creator and co-writer of 'Sapiens: A Graphic History': a radical adaptation of 'Sapiens' into a graphic novel series (launched in 2020), which he published together with comics artists David Vandermeulen (co-writer) and Daniel Casanave (illustrator). These books have been translated into 65 languages, with 45 million copies sold, and have been recommended by Barack Obama, Bill Gates, Natalie Portman, Janelle Monáe, Chris Evans and many others. Harari has a PhD in History from the University of Oxford, is a Lecturer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's History department, and is a Distinguished Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risk. Together with his husband, Itzik Yahav, Yuval Noah Harari is the co-founder of Sapienship: a social impact company that advocates for global collaboration, with projects in the realm of education and storytelling.

Customer reviews

19,719 global ratings

How customer reviews and ratings work

Review this product

Write a customer review

Customers say

Customers find the book insightful, with excellent frameworks for honest thinking and amazing new perspectives. Moreover, they appreciate its accessibility with short, eye-opening chapters, and consider it a great addition to Sapiens and Homo Deus. The author's mind and writing style receive positive feedback, and customers find it fun to read, with one noting it's a must-read for thinking adults. However, the book's speculative content receives mixed reactions, with some finding it scary.

Select to learn more

Insight Readability Author's perspective Accessibility Pacing Eye opening Wit Spooky content

375 customers mention "Insight"323 positive52 negative

Customers find the book insightful, appreciating its excellent frameworks for honest thinking and providing amazing new perspectives.

"...What we experience today is freedom of choice, and how choices are arrived at, comes relatively recently in human history...." Read more

"...I started with this book and I was not disappointed. A very interesting take on the various directions humanity might be headed...." Read more

"...Overall, I am impressed with Harari’s sweep as well as his ability as a historian to be a “disruptive thinker” and put important emerging issues..." Read more

"...by the sheer brilliance of Harari's mind, a mind that is unique and astonishing, then I would highly recommend this book...." Read more

322 customers mention "Readability"295 positive27 negative

Customers find the book highly readable and enjoyable to read, with one customer noting it's particularly suitable for book clubs.

"...and writing a non-Western language (Hebrew), his ability to translate his thoughts into English, and writing as well as he does, is an..." Read more

"...Despite my criticism, Harari is very much worth reading for the way he portrays current human problems and those coming over the horizon that..." Read more

"This book is good!" Read more

"...major books and found "21 Lessons for the 21st Century" to be the most compelling and important of all...." Read more

57 customers mention "Author's perspective"57 positive0 negative

Customers appreciate the author's perspective, describing them as an amazingly intelligent individual with thought-provoking writing.

"...Harari is perhaps among the most incisive and farseeing writers I have encountered in recent times...." Read more

"I read a bit then have to pause and enjoy the intelligent and thought provoking writing...." Read more

"...Harari is a talented writer and one can enjoy reading this book as an intelligent man’s musings about the contemporary world picture...." Read more

"A very valuable set of observations from a great thinker. Enjoyed every page. Give it as a gift to everyone in your family." Read more

24 customers mention "Accessibility"21 positive3 negative

Customers find the book easy to comprehend, with short chapters that are eye-opening.

"...Harari explains complex ideas in ways that make sense and are able to be understood." Read more

"...Harari's writing style is engaging and easy to understand, making complex concepts accessible to a wide audience...." Read more

"...I specifically liked the chapter entitled "God." It is short and sweet--has really had me thinking...." Read more

"...the same ideology but the simplicity and his straight forward of an approach is highly practical (to my personal opinion)...." Read more

18 customers mention "Pacing"15 positive3 negative

Customers appreciate the pacing of the book, with several noting it's a great addition to Sapiens and Homo Deus, and praising the author's brilliance.

"...Overall, I am impressed with Harari’s sweep as well as his ability as a historian to be a “disruptive thinker” and put important emerging issues..." Read more

"...Undeniably, Harari is brilliant...." Read more

"...scrutiny for sure, but I love about books like this is that is forces me to pause and rethink my beliefs and ideals...." Read more

"This is the third book by the author that I have read. His Homo Sapiens was excellent. His Homo Deus was an utter disappointment...." Read more

15 customers mention "Eye opening"15 positive0 negative

Customers find the book eye-opening, providing a thoughtful look at current world matters.

"...and social challenges created by the ascent of Big Data is very illuminating...." Read more

"...It's eye opening, but there's no clear direction about what to do...." Read more

"Eye opener that guides to understand ourselves and reality by introspection and meditation...." Read more

"...This books effectively shines the light on current world matters and how we got here from multiple angles. A must read." Read more

13 customers mention "Wit"13 positive0 negative

Customers appreciate the author's wit and writing style, finding it thought-provoking and amusing, with one customer noting how well it captures idioms.

"Accurate and clever written, a must-read indeed for everybody, especially influencers in every area of human affairs." Read more

"...I specifically liked the chapter entitled "God." It is short and sweet--has really had me thinking...." Read more

"He has a nice way of capturing idioms. Could be employed to create tomorrow's cliches. The first third was not original, just journalism as history...." Read more

"Nice prose. Very amusing. A very creative an imaginative mind. Just don't take it as a bible or take the author for a prophet!..." Read more

13 customers mention "Spooky content"8 positive5 negative

Customers have mixed reactions to the book's content, with some appreciating its political phenomena and speculative nature, while others find it scary and filled with horrible possibilities.

"...ability to connect seemingly disparate topics, such as technology, politics, and religion, to demonstrate how they are all interconnected and shape..." Read more

"...The warnings of global challenges are really serious, and the world leaders should heed them." Read more

"...It tears down the mythical liberal democracy as an ethereal concept and leaves stable pillars to build off of...." Read more

"...broken down in 21 chapters related to technological challenges, political challenges, "despair and hope" (religion, terrorism, war, etc.) ,..." Read more

Reviews with images

See all photos

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews. Please reload the page.

Arthur R. Silen
This is a philosophy of life as it is lived in the modern world
Reviewed in the United States on January 12, 2024
Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

I did a cover-to-cover preview, having received my copy of it late yesterday afternoon. I actually spent about two hours, reading short excerpts and getting a feel for how the writer marshals his facts and crafts his arguments. From there, I previewed the enumerated topics of the book, following the flow of argument and the evidence Yuval Noah Harari refers to make his point. The main thing about this book is to understand that the 21st century is going to be unlike anything humankind has experienced in the past. Our prior experience will not necessarily be a trustworthy guide to our future as a species. Harare is an Israeli Jew who came to knowledge of the world rather late. Growing up he mentions that his education Israel was utterly devoid of knowledge of European and world history, nor was he aware of the historical developments that characterized the Middle Ages, the Age of Exploration and European conquest of the non-European world. He knew of European history only in so far as it gave him an understanding about how he and his forebears ended up in the Land of Israel. Coming onto the subject cold, this new cornucopia of knowledge offered him certain advantages insofar as you learn to take nothing for granted or at face value. For people who emigrate to a new land, with different attitudes and customs from those they have known, there is the painful process that all immigrants experience in figuring out who they are, and how quickly they need to learn how to survive in this new environment. Harari is perhaps among the most incisive and farseeing writers I have encountered in recent times. He holds a PhD from Oxford University (no mean feat), and for someone who apparently spent his early years speaking and writing a non-Western language (Hebrew), his ability to translate his thoughts into English, and writing as well as he does, is an accomplishment that is beyond the reach of most other recent immigrants I have encountered in my lifetime. He must've spent an enormous amount of time with the Oxford Dictionary of the English Language!

It is clear to me that Harari is onto something. The strangeness that people feel when they run up against stuff they don't know, and have difficulty figuring out what to do, is going to be far beyond the cultural and linguistic barriers that recent immigrants typically experience. With English, there are thousands of words that have more than one meaning, and thousands of words that have shared meanings, depending upon context, and intent.

Harari is telling his readers to experience the strangeness that he must've felt speaking, writing, and using the English language for the first time. Most Americans are not used to learning foreign languages, because people come to America where relatively few people other than recent immigrants routinely converse and whatever other languages they happen to be trained in, or learn from infancy.

Briefly, the outline of this book is as follows.

In Part 1, Harari begins with a discussion of what he terms, "The Technological Challenge"., Followed by the head note reading, "Humankind is losing faith in the liberal story that dominated global politics in recent decades, exactly when the merger of Biotech and Infotech confronts us with the biggest challenges humankind has ever encountered."

He starts with, "Disillusionment; The End of History Has Been Postponed". Basically, Harari argues that humankind, having conquered the world, is vulnerable to technology that turns out to be an insidious threat to what it means to be human. He states that liberalism, as it used to be practiced at large in the world has reached something worse than just simply being a dead end, its consequences are becoming perverse. But conservatives should take no comfort from liberalism's embarrassment; nobody really wants to live in an authoritarian or fascistic state.

In today's world, 'work' is purposeful activity that society finds to be commercially useful, and worthy of paying money to people to perform whatever it is they do to make work productive. Harari says that work as we know it may become scarce because the skills that people acquire over a lifetime to make themselves productive enough to earn a living out of those activities, may be taken over by Artificial Intelligence, in which jobs that are not only repetitive, but includes those that require some form of judgment and discretion may become subsumed in the kind of tasks that AI can do more cost-effectively than people can. Undoubtedly, there will be numerous fixes that will be attempted to preserve jobs, but their prospects are likely to be some form of a rearguard action to delay the introduction of AI into those workspaces. Those worst off will likely be unskilled laborers were currently employed in Third World countries overseas at minimum wages. They will find that their labor is superfluous when a high tech companies in Silicon Valley, California, and elsewhere figure out how to harness 3D printers and comparable technologies to accomplish end-to-end production lines from concept to finished product for just about anything that is manufactured overseas.

So how do ordinary people earn money to meet their needs? How are they to be supported if they are not working in the private sector, for wages or salaries, and how much money will they need to survive. We are looking at Nth-degree consequences of a world in which machines and computer bots can manufacture whatever is needed to sustain human life. Programs of education and training need to be right-sized to meet the needs of the society as it exists nominally at the time of its inception, but for a generation or two down the road as school children mature into maturity, and thereafter into old age.

Political liberty and freedom are also on the auction block. What we experience today is freedom of choice, and how choices are arrived at, comes relatively recently in human history. Decision-making follows a well-trodden path where alternatives are weighed and measured, until the final choices made; what happens when humans are influenced by outside forces that they cannot fathom some of the choices they make benefit someone else, rather than themselves? What is to be said about 'free will' in the face of an AI algorithm that simulates human thinking and emotion? What can we say about 'Equality', when all meaningful data are owned by other people or corporate entities?

I'll leave the review here at this point, because having laid out some of the basic questions that Yuval Noah Harari writes about, I'll invite readers to find out for themselves by reading this highly provocative book.

Read more

55 people found this helpful

Helpful

Report
Plant Native
A fascinating read on the potential of humanity in the new age
Reviewed in the United States on May 19, 2025
Format: KindleVerified Purchase
I first heard of Harari on the Kara Swisher podcast. Listening to him discuss the issues around nascent technology I decided I wanted to know more. I started with this book and I was not disappointed. A very interesting take on the various directions humanity might be headed. If you are tired of listening to stupid, poorly structured arguments about our moment in history, this book is for you. The ideas and arguments are very tight, carefully researched and thoughtfully presented.

Read more

Helpful

Report
Fred Cheyunski
The Major Challenges in Our Times
Reviewed in the United States on February 28, 2019
Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase
Our dentist recommended Harari’s “Sapiens” to my wife, which she read and so taken continued through his second book “Homo Deus,” and went on to his “21 Lessons” which she commended to me. While I usually have my own reading agenda, I eventually got around to completing the book and glad I did as it clearly and succinctly outlines the major challenges of our times.

While I do not agree with all of Harari’s characterizations or proposed solutions, I have to appreciate the directness and honesty in his delivery. Since his books are so popular and numerously reviewed, I only briefly refer to the content of Harari’s book and concentrate more on aspects that I found more or less useful.

Within the book, Harari’s progresses through 5 parts to present his “21 Lessons.” In Part I, he conveys “The Technological Challenge” resulting from developments such as in life and computer sciences including (1) Disillusionment, (2) Work, (3) Equality, and (4) Liberty. Continuing in Part II, the author discusses “The Political Challenge” that ensues from these occurrences consisting of (5) Community, (6) Civilization, (7) Nationalism, (8) Religion, and (9) Immigration. Within Part III, Harari deals with the “Despair and Hope” resulting in society involving (10) Terrorism, (11) War, (12) Humility, (13) God, and (14) Secularism. For Part IV, the author wrestles with the difficulties in getting at the “Truth” entailed in (15) Ignorance, (16) Justice, (17) Post Truth, and (18) Science Fiction. Finally, in Part V, he takes up “Resilience” and ways to continue to function and advance with (19) Education, (20) Meaning, and (21) Meditation.

Overall, I am impressed with Harari’s sweep as well as his ability as a historian to be a “disruptive thinker” and put important emerging issues into clear relief. His descriptions compare favorably with books such as Rutherford’s A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: The Stories in Our Genes, Barrett’s How Emotions Are Made and Lanier’s Who Owns the Future? in expressing the complexity in these topics and their extensive ramifications. The author’s discussions also remind me of those contained in Brooke Gladstone’s The Trouble with Reality: A Rumination on Moral Panic in Our Time.

On the other hand, Harari’s skepticism and pessimism in questioning prevailing views can seem a little too fatalistic; his views, at times, do not seem to offer someone like me with enough alternatives and options with which to advance or at least take next steps in coping beyond meditation----although perhaps that’s the place from which they come. A contrasting foil might be the optimism in Pinker’s Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress where he puts more stock in reason, science and humanism (see my review of this book and others mentioned).

Despite my criticism, Harari is very much worth reading for the way he portrays current human problems and those coming over the horizon that require our attention now and into the future.

Read more

13 people found this helpful

Helpful

Report
Ickhwan Kim
This book is good!
Reviewed in the United States on April 13, 2025
Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
This book is good!

Read more

Helpful

Report

Top reviews from other countries

Translate all reviews to English

Paulo Roberto Martins Cunha
Audaciosamente ousado. Vale a pena cada página.
Reviewed in Brazil on April 9, 2023
Verified Purchase

Audaciosamente ousado em pensar o presente e o futuro próximos. Embora tenha sido público há cinco anos (2018), continua atualíssimo, especialmente em face da popularização do Chat-GPT. Comprei a edição de bolso em inglês para evitar os reincidentes problemas com traduções nacionais. Foi inclusive mais barato!

Read more

Paulo Roberto Martins Cunha

Audaciosamente ousado. Vale a pena cada página.

Reviewed in Brazil on April 9, 2023
Audaciosamente ousado em pensar o presente e o futuro próximos. Embora tenha sido público há cinco anos (2018), continua atualíssimo, especialmente em face da popularização do Chat-GPT. Comprei a edição de bolso em inglês para evitar os reincidentes problemas com traduções nacionais. Foi inclusive mais barato!

Images in this review

Report
Translate review to English
Jack Jenkins
It's a curious read
Reviewed in the Netherlands on March 27, 2022
Verified Purchase
For me, this is the second book that I read from the current trilogy and it is, as the author concedes, a distinctly different book from the first and thus presumably too from the third. With far more speculation, I found more freedom as a reader to disagree with the concepts and presented interpretations here than before, of course. Although a different experience, it was nice to feel like I was involved, in some sense, in the actual text, in the conversation. But a word of warning, it pulls no punches during the first few chapters on the merging of bio and info tech - and left me feeling a mix of curiosity, intrigue, concern, and perhaps a little worry.

Read more
Report
Fatemeh
Great book
Reviewed in Germany on March 26, 2025
Verified Purchase
Great book. Totally recommend

Read more
Report
Sardaukar
Un Harari aussi passionnant que Sapiens
Reviewed in France on September 12, 2018
Verified Purchase
Je ne l'ai pas encore terminé (ça ne se lit pas aussi vite qu'un roman et ça fatigue un peu la tête). Harari a toujours une façon originale d'aborder les problèmes et de prendre du recul avant de les analyser. Très documenté. Pas forcément optimiste et un peu à contre-courant du politiquement correct, surtout sur les problèmes de migration et d'intégration, mais toujours rationnel et factuel.

Read more
Report
Translate review to English
Hugo Gustafsson
Great book
Reviewed in Sweden on July 25, 2024
Verified Purchase
Very interesting book written so it’s easy to understand what the author is meaning

Read more
Report

See more reviews

Follow the author

21 Lessons for the 21st Century Hardcover – September 4, 2018

Purchase options and add-ons

Frequently bought together

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Review

About the Author

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Product details

Videos

About the author

Yuval Noah Harari

Customer reviews

Review this product

Customers say

Select to learn more

Images in this review

Reviews with images

Important to read and understand how to survive into the future

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews. Please reload the page.

5.0 out of 5 stars This is a philosophy of life as it is lived in the modern world

5.0 out of 5 stars A fascinating read on the potential of humanity in the new age

4.0 out of 5 stars The Major Challenges in Our Times

5.0 out of 5 stars This book is good!

Top reviews from other countries

5.0 out of 5 stars Audaciosamente ousado. Vale a pena cada página.

Audaciosamente ousado. Vale a pena cada página.

Images in this review

4.0 out of 5 stars It's a curious read

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book

5.0 out of 5 stars Un Harari aussi passionnant que Sapiens

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book

This is a philosophy of life as it is lived in the modern world

A fascinating read on the potential of humanity in the new age

The Major Challenges in Our Times

This book is good!

Audaciosamente ousado. Vale a pena cada página.

It's a curious read

Great book

Un Harari aussi passionnant que Sapiens

Great book