"From a renowned historian comes a groundbreaking narrative of humanity's creation and evolution--a #1 international bestseller--that explores the ways in which biology and history have defined us and enhanced our understanding of what it means to be "human." One hundred thousand years ago, at least six different species of humans inhabited Earth. Yet today there is only one--homo sapiens. What happened to the others? And what may happen to us? Most...

Jared Diamond, Professor of Physiology at the UCLA School of Medicine, goes beyond weapons, war tactics, and politics to show how biological and environmental factors changed and shaped thousands of years of history.

In the second "Sapiens" volume, Yuval Noah Harari tells the story of how we took over the world; how an unlikely marriage between a god and a bureaucrat created the first empires; and how war, famine, disease, and inequality became a part of the human condition. The origins of modern farming are introduced through Elizabethan tragedy, the changing fortunes of domesticated plants and animals are tracked in the columns of the Daily Business News, and...