"Sapiens," is extraordinary on how well it summaries the human journey through time from the start. It never gets too technical but it's highly informative. It's 500+ pages yet it's hard to put down because it's so entertaining. I highly recommend it.
This is all true, but I sometimes missed the nuance of less witty but more detail-oriented histories. Harari could seem flippant at times, which mostly amused me when I agreed with him, but left me worried when I didn't. In a book this short on a period so vast, there was no space to steelman anything.
I find it very useful, and especially by combining the two.
For example, in 2015 I've read more than double of the amount of books I've read this year, but comparing by the number of pages, the difference is just a few dozen pages.
While the amount I've read remained steady, I'm clearly able to retain longer focus necessary to read longer titles, which is something I wouldn't easily spot in such a short timeframe otherwise.
* Higher: A Historic Race to the Sky and the Making of a City by Neal Bascomb
* Caesar’s Last Breath: Decoding the Secrets of the Air Around Us by Sam Kean
* Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
* A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts by Andrew Chaikin
* The Actor’s Life: A survival guide by Jenna Fischer
* The Interstellar Age: The Story of the NASA Men and Women Who Flew the Forty-Year Voyager Mission by Jim Bell
* The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance by David Epstein
* Uncommon People: The Rise and Fall of the Rock Stars 1955-1994 by David Hepworth
* Chasing Space: An Astronaut's Story of Grit, Grace, & Second Chances by Leland Melvin
* The Johnstown Flood by David McCullough
* Jefferson: Architect of American Liberty by John B. Boles