Table of Contents
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INTRODUCTION
PART I - WHAT IS UNIQUE ABOUT SAPIENS?
Hominins Up their Collaboration Game
Our Brain is Addicted to Stories
PART I Conclusion: What is it About Sapiens?
Postscript: The Humility Paradox
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PART II - THE LONG SLOG
The Not-So-Revolutionary Revolution
Civilization Didn't Wait for Agriculture
Microscopic Giants: the Species that Shaped Humanity
The First States: A Radical Disruption
Religion: The Complex Path to Human Cooperation
200,000 Years of Stagnation, 150 Years of Growth - and Freedom's U-Turns
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Bibliography
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With a topic so broad, the bibliography is bound to be a hodgepodge of things. I read well over 150 books and numerous articles, far too many to list. I included the most notable and relevant items and tried to group them by theme. I bolded the books I found most helpful. Those books are also wonderful reads should you want to learn more on a given topic.
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Part I - What Is Unique About Sapiens?
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Amstrong, Karen. Sacred Nature: Restoring our Ancient Bond with the Natural World. 2022.
Anderson, David. The Nature of the Beast: How Emotions Guide Us. 2022.
Bennett, Max. A Brief History of Human Intelligence. Evolution, AI, and the Five Breakthroughs that Made our Brain. 2023.
Bregman, Rutger and Moore, Erica. Humankind: A Hopeful History. 2020.
Burgis, Luke. Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life. 2021.
Christian, David. Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History. 2011.
Churchland, Patricia. Conscience. The Origins of Moral Intuition. 2019.
De Waal, Frans. Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? 2016.
Diamond, Jared. The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal. 2006.
Dunbar, Robin. Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language. 1998.
Dunbar, Robin. Human Evolution. Our Brains and Behavior. 2016.
Firth-Godbehere, Richard. A Human History of Emotion. How the Way We Feel Built the World We Know. 2021.
Fuentes, Agustin. The Creative Spark: How Imagination Made Humans Exceptional. 2017.
Gee, Henry. A (Very) Brief History of Life on Earth: 4.6 Billion Years in 12 Pithy Chapters. 2021.
Gottschall, Jonathan. The Storytelling Animal. How Stories Make Us Human. 2012.
Graeber, David and Wengrow, David. The Dawn of Everything. A New History of Humanity. 2021.
Greene, Joshua. Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them. 2013.
Haidt, Jonathan. The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom. 2006.
Haidt, Jonathan. The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion. 2012.
Harari, Yuval. Sapiens. A Brief History of Humankind. 2015.
Harari, Yuval. Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow. 2017.
Hoffman, Donald. The Case Against Reality: How Evolution Hid the Truth From our Eyes. 2020.
Kenrick, Douglas and Kenrick, David. Solving Modern Problems with a Stone-Age Brain. Human Evolution and the Seven Motives. 2022.
Lent, Jeremy. The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity's Search for Meaning. 2019.
Lent, Jeremy. The Web of Meaning: Integrating Science and Traditional Wisdom to Find our Place in the Universe. 2021.
Markel, Howard. Origin Story. The Trials of Charles Darwin. 2024.
Moore, Geoffrey. The Infinite Staircase. What the Universe Tells Us About Life, Ethics, and Mortality. 2021.
Packer, Dominic. The Power of Us: Harnessing our Shared Identities to Improve Performance, Increase Cooperation, and Promote Social Harmony. 2021.
Phillips, Tom. Humans: A Brief History of How We F*cked It All Up. 2023.
Prinz, Jesse. Beyond Human Nature: How Culture and Experience Shape the Human Mind. 2014.
Raihani, Nichola. The Social Instinct. How Cooperation Shaped the World. 2021.
Ravven, Heidi. The Self Beyond Itself: An Alternative History of Ethics, the New Brain Sciences, and the Myth of Free Will. 2019.
Ridley, Matt. The Origins of Virtue. The Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation. 1998.
Sapolsky, Robert. Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst. 2017.
Seth, Anil. Being You: A New Science of Consciousness. 2021.
Storr, Will. The Science of Storytelling: Why Stories Make Us Human and How to Tell Them Better. 2020.
Wilson, Edward O. The Social Conquest of Earth. 2012.
Wilson, Edward O. The Meaning of Human Existence. 2014.
Wrangham, Richard. The Goodness Paradox. The Strange Relationship between Virtue and Violence in Human Evolution. 2019.
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Part II - The Long Slog
Acemoglu, Daron, and Johnson, Simon. The Narrow Corridor. States, Society, and the Fate of Liberty. 2019.
Acemoglu, Daron, and Johnson, Simon. Power and Progress. Our 1,000 year Struggle over Technology and Prosperity. 2023.
Bayly C.A. The Birth of the Modern World. 1780 to 1914. 2004.
Bernstein, William J. The Birth of Plenty: How the Prosperity of the Modern World Was Created. 2010.
Bernstein, William J. A Splendid Exchange. How Trade Shaped the World. 2008.
Burbank, Jane and Cooper, Frederick. Empires in World History. Power and the Politics of Difference. 2021.
Chua, Amy. Day of Empire: How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance.. and Why they Fall. 2009.
Cogan, Philip. More: A History of the World Economy from the Iron Age to the Information Age. 2020.
Crowley, Roger. 1453: The Holy War for Constantinople and the Clash of Islam and the West. 2013.
Crowley, Roger. Conquerors. How Portugal Forged the First Global Empire. 2015.
Diamond, Jared. Guns, Germs, and Steel. The Fates of Human Societies. 2017.
Favereau, Mary. The Horde. How the Mongols Changed the World. 2021.
Feinman, Gary M. and Marcus, Joyce. Archaic States. 1998.
Ferguson, Niall. The Ascent of Money. 2008.
Ferguson, Niall. Civilization. The West and the Rest. 2011.
Ferguson, Niall. The Square and the Tower. Networks and Power, from the Freemasons to Facebook. 2017.
Fernandez-Armesto, Felipe. Civilizations. Culture, Ambition, and the Transformation of Nature. 2001.
Flannery, Kent and Marcus, Joyce. The Creation of Inequality: How our Prehistoric Ancestors Set the Stage for Monarchy, Slavery, and Empire. 2012.
Frankopan, Peter. The Silk Roads. A New History of the World. 2015.
Greenblatt, Stephen. The Swerve. How the World Became Modern. 2011.
Harari, Yuval. Nexus. A Brief History of Information Networks, from the Stone Age to AI. 2024.
Hobsbawm, Eric. The Age of Revolution: 1789 to 1848. 1996 Edition.
Kennedy, Jonathan. Pathogenesis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues. 2023.
McNeill, J.R. and McNeill, William. The Human Web: A Bird's Eye View of World History. 2003.
McNeill, William. Plagues and Peoples. 1993.
Mokyr, Joel. A Culture of Growth: The Origins of the Modern Economy. 2016.
Mokyr, Joel. The Lever of Riches. Technological Creativity and Economic Progress. 1990.
Morris, Ian. Why the West Rules - for Now. The Patterns of History, and What they Reveal about the Future. 2010.
Scott, James C. Against the Grain. A Deep History of the Earliest States. 2017.
Siedentop, Larry. Inventing the Individual. The Origins of Western Liberalism. 2014.
Toynbee, Arnold. A Study of History. 1975.
Turchin, Peter. Ultrasociety: How 10,000 Years of War Made Humans the Greatest Cooperators on Earth. 2015.
Turchin, Peter. War and Peace and War. The Rise and Fall of Empires. 2006.
Weatherford, Jack. Empire of the Seas. Kublai Khan and the Making of China. 2024.
Weatherford, Jack. Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World. 2005.
Weatherford, Jack. The History of Money. 2009.
Weatherford, Jack. The Secret History of the Mongol Queens:. How the Daughters of Genghis Khan Rescued his Empire. 2010
Yoffe, Norman. Myths of the Archaic State. Evolution of the Earliest Cities, States, and Civilizations. 2007.
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(more sections will be added gradually based on new chapters or themes)
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