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H. Sapiens
- The Last 12,000 Years
- Narrated by: Sean "DrC" Cordry
- Length: 10 hrs and 52 mins
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H. Sapiens
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Publisher's summary
A cosmic conundrum...
This astonishing audiobook follows our ascendancy from just another hominin on the open African savannah to the alpha hegemon on Earth today endangering its entire future. Along the way, humans methodically outwitted their competition with phenomenal efficiency and indifference to emerge in the modern 21st century as the linchpin of a major mass extinction of countless other lifeforms cohabiting their planet with them. The shredding of our fragile ecosphere by massive proliferation and monopolistic overconsumption of Earth’s precious resources by this single single invasive species, along with the inexorable combustion of deadly fossil fuels to acquire the energy needed to sustain their profligate and lavish lifestyle, is threatening to drive H. sapiens itself into extinction within the next 300 years. This is the true story of that improbable adventure!
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 91
-
Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 77
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 78
While everything appears to be collapsing around us - ecodamage, genetic engineering, virulent diseases, water shortages, global famine, wars - we can still do something about it and create a world that will work for us and for our children's children. The inspiration for Leonardo DiCaprio's feature documentary movie The 11th Hour, The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight details what is happening to our planet, the reasons for our culture's blind behavior, and how we can fix the problem.
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5 out of 5 stars
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One of the Most Important Books of our Time
- By Jana on 04-24-20
By: Thom Hartmann, and others
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The Journey of Humanity
- The Origins of Wealth and Inequality
- By: Oded Galor
- Narrated by: Kobna Holdbrook-Smith
- Length: 8 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 51
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 44
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 43
Why are humans the only species to have escaped—only very recently—the subsistence trap, allowing us to enjoy a standard of living that vastly exceeds all others? And why have we progressed so unequally around the world, resulting in the great disparities between nations that exist today? Galor’s gripping narrative explains how technology, population size, and adaptation led to a stunning “phase change” in the human story a mere two hundred years ago.
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4 out of 5 stars
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promoting innovation and industrial disease
- By Anonymous User on 01-18-24
By: Oded Galor
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Nonzero
- The Logic of Human Destiny
- By: Robert Wright
- Narrated by: Kevin T. Collins
- Length: 16 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 412
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 306
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Story4 out of 5 stars 306
At the beginning of Nonzero, Robert Wright sets out to "define the arrow of the history of life, from the primordial soup to the World Wide Web." Twenty-two chapters later, after a sweeping and vivid narrative of the human past, he has succeeded and has mounted a powerful challenge to the conventional view that evolution and human history are aimless.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Non-Zero (but pretty close to zero)
- By Douglas on 02-06-14
By: Robert Wright
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Pandora's Seed
- The Unforeseen Cost of Civilization
- By: Spencer Wells
- Narrated by: Spencer Wells
- Length: 6 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 167
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 67
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Story4 out of 5 stars 68
This new book by Spencer Wells, the internationally known geneticist, anthropologist, author, and director of the Genographic Project, focuses on the seminal event in human history: mankind's decision to become farmers rather than hunter-gatherers.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Short and unfocused, but often quite interesting.
- By Alan on 06-23-10
By: Spencer Wells
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Transcendence
- How Humans Evolved Through Fire, Language, Beauty, and Time
- By: Gaia Vince
- Narrated by: Gaia Vince
- Length: 11 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 40
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 36
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 36
How four tools enabled humanity to control its destiny What enabled us to go from simple stone tools to smartphones? How did bands of hunter-gatherers evolve into multinational empires? Listeners of Sapiens will say a cognitive revolution - a dramatic evolutionary change that altered our brains, turning primitive humans into modern ones - caused a cultural explosion. In Transcendence, Gaia Vince argues instead that modern humans are the product of a nuanced coevolution of our genes, environment, and culture that goes back into deep time.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Far too much bias and unsupported conclusions
- By Kurt Leyendecker on 10-01-20
By: Gaia Vince
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Unbound
- How Eight Technologies Made Us Human, Transformed Society, and Brought Our World to the Brink
- By: Richard L. Currier
- Narrated by: Noah Michael Levine
- Length: 10 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 240
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 213
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Story4 out of 5 stars 212
Although we usually think of technology as something unique to modern times, our ancestors began to create the first technologies millions of years ago in the form of prehistoric tools and weapons. Over time, eight key technologies gradually freed us from the limitations of our animal origins.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Good facts, not much else
- By Joel B. Gordon on 10-30-16
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Sapiens
- A Brief History of Humankind
- By: Yuval Noah Harari
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 15 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 55,109
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 47,082
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 46,761
Most books about the history of humanity pursue either a historical or a biological approach, but Dr. Yuval Noah Harari breaks the mold with this highly original book. From examining the role evolving humans have played in the global ecosystem to charting the rise of empires, Sapiens integrates history and science to reconsider accepted narratives, connect past developments with contemporary concerns, and examine specific events within the context of larger ideas.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Should be required reading
- By Blue Zion on 12-22-18
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The Future of Life
- By: Edward O. Wilson
- Narrated by: Ed Begley Jr.
- Length: 7 hrs and 21 mins
- Abridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 223
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 93
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 93
Today we understand that our world is infinitely richer than was ever previously guessed. Yet it is so ravaged by human activity that half its species could be gone by the end of the century. These two contrasting truths - unexpected magnificence and underestimated peril - have become compellingly clear during the past two decades of research on biological diversity. In his dazzlingly intelligent book, Wilson describes the treasures of the natural world we are about to lose forever and how we can save them.
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4 out of 5 stars
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A scientifically-grounded case for the environment
- By Lucas on 01-24-10
By: Edward O. Wilson
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Against the Grain
- A Deep History of the Earliest States
- By: James C. Scott
- Narrated by: Eric Jason Martin
- Length: 8 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 826
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 687
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 682
Why did humans abandon hunting and gathering for sedentary communities dependent on livestock and cereal grains and governed by precursors of today's states? Most people believe that plant and animal domestication allowed humans, finally, to settle down and form agricultural villages, towns, and states, which made possible civilization, law, public order, and a presumably secure way of living. But archaeological and historical evidence challenges this narrative.
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4 out of 5 stars
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World without Women
- By Paul Richards on 04-28-18
By: James C. Scott
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The Invention of Yesterday
- A 50,000-Year History of Human Culture, Conflict, and Connection
- By: Tamim Ansary
- Narrated by: Tamim Ansary
- Length: 17 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 402
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 348
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Story5 out of 5 stars 345
Traveling across millennia, weaving the experiences and world views of cultures both extinct and extant, The Invention of Yesterday shows that the engine of history is not so much heroic (battles won), geographic (farmers thrive), or anthropogenic (humans change the planet) as it is narrative. Many thousands of years ago, when we existed only as countless small autonomous bands of hunter-gatherers widely distributed through the wilderness, we began inventing stories - to organize for survival, to find purpose and meaning, to explain the unfathomable.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Relaxed but packed with insight
- By Tad Davis on 02-14-20
By: Tamim Ansary
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Origin Story
- A Big History of Everything
- By: David Christian
- Narrated by: Jamie Jackson
- Length: 12 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 2,148
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,885
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,880
Most historians study the smallest slivers of time, emphasizing specific dates, individuals, and documents. But what would it look like to study the whole of history, from the big bang through the present day - and even into the remote future? How would looking at the full span of time change the way we perceive the universe, the earth, and our very existence? These were the questions David Christian set out to answer when he created the field of "Big History", the most exciting new approach to understanding where we have been, where we are, and where we are going.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A brilliant achievement, must read/listen
- By 11104 on 09-05-18
By: David Christian
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A Troublesome Inheritance
- Genes, Race, and Human History
- By: Nicholas Wade
- Narrated by: Alan Sklar
- Length: 10 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 413
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 362
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 364
Drawing on startling new evidence from the mapping of the genome, an explosive new account of the genetic basis of race and its role in the human story. Human evolution, the consensus view insists, ended in prehistory. Inconveniently, as Nicholas Wade argues in A Troublesome Inheritance, the consensus view cannot be right. And in fact, we know that populations have changed in the past few thousand years - to be lactose tolerant, for example, and to survive at high altitudes.
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5 out of 5 stars
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This is NOT Racism!...
- By Douglas on 06-01-14
By: Nicholas Wade
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The Vanishing Face of Gaia
- A Final Warning
- By: James Lovelock
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 6 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 64
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 56
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 56
In The Vanishing Face of Gaia, British scientist James Lovelock predicts global warming will lead to a Hot Epoch. Lovelock is best known for formulating the controversial Gaia theory in the 1970s, with Ruth Margulis of the University of Massachusetts, which states that organisms interact with and regulate Earth's surface and atmosphere. We ignore this interaction at our peril.
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5 out of 5 stars
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A New Perspective - A Must Listen - Very Moving
- By Thomas on 01-29-12
By: James Lovelock
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Progress
- Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future
- By: Johan Norberg
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 6 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 248
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 207
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 207
It's on the television, in the papers, and in our minds. Every day we're bludgeoned by news of how bad everything is - financial collapse, unemployment, growing poverty, environmental disasters, disease, hunger, war. But the rarely acknowledged reality is that our progress over the past few decades has been unprecedented. By almost any index you care to identify, things are markedly better now than they have ever been for almost everyone alive.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Global Uptrends That May Surprise You
- By Alexandra Hopkins on 09-22-17
By: Johan Norberg
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A Short History of Humanity
- A New History of Old Europe
- By: Johannes Krause, Thomas Trappe, Caroline Waight - translator
- Narrated by: Stephen Graybill
- Length: 6 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 156
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 126
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 127
Johannes Krause is the director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and a brilliant pioneer in the field of archaeogenetics - archaeology augmented by DNA sequencing technology - which has allowed scientists to reconstruct human history reaching back hundreds of thousands of years before recorded time. In this surprising account, Krause and journalist Thomas Trappe rewrite a fascinating chapter of this history, the peopling of Europe, that takes us from the Neanderthals and Denisovans to the present.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Not a short history of humanity
- By Brent on 05-02-21
By: Johannes Krause, and others
What listeners say about H. Sapiens
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- nick shroff
- 01-26-23
extinction within 300 years due to accelerating
This is an important book and deserves to be widely read. It plausibly follows the extraordinary history of our human species from its evolutionary origins to the present moment, where we face significant existential challenges to our continued success as a species on this planet, according to many modern cognoscenti. Those challenges are immense, and the outcome uncertain, which the author Fil Munas describes here in a very appealing and commonsensical manner. I am familiar with Dr. Munas’ previous two books, but this one, H. sapiens, is exceptional.
The book requires a basic understanding of the physical, chemical, and biological sciences, at least at the secondary school level, to be fully appreciated. A welcome contribution to the next generation!
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