21 Lessons for the 21st Century, Yuval Noah Harari
21 Lessons for the 21st Century, Yuval Noah Harari
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21 Lessons for the 21st Century

Bestseller

Author: Yuval Noah Harari

Narrator: Derek Perkins

Unabridged: 11 hr 50 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 09/04/2018


Synopsis

#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.

About Yuval Noah Harari

Israeli born Yuval Noah Harari is a historian and philosopher who was born in Haifa, Israel, and received his PhD from Hebrew University of Jerusalem in the Department of History. He is the author of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, and 21 Lessons for the 21st Century. All Harari books have sold millions of copies worldwide, and have been translated in many countries. Sapiens has been chosen to be adapted to film by Hollywood.

Harari's books are very popular with progressives and they ask questions about such thoughts as what he describes as the "cognitive revolution", and how it affected language development; the agricultural revolution, and how the scientific method accelerated everything. His opinion in his book concerning future consequences of the futuristic biotechnological world is that "Homo sapiens as we know them will disappear in a century or so".

Harari practices Vipassana meditation, he is a vegan, and does not own a smartphone. He became vegan because in his research he developed the view that the dairy industry is breaking the bond between mother cow and calf.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Bill on December 03, 2018

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, cl......more

Goodreads review by Emily May on December 26, 2018

I really like Harari. I like his books a lot, but I think that is at least in part due to how much I like him. He seems like an intelligent, intuitive and empathetic person, and so his books become all those things. 21 Lessons for the 21st Century is really a book about where we are and how we can m......more

Goodreads review by David on June 27, 2018

Society 101 Yuval Harari is well known for his books Sapiens and Homo Deus. He has decided to squander his reputation on a book called 21 Lessons for the 21st Century. The basic problem is that every chapter is the subject of whole shelves of books, and putting them all in one book cannot possibly d......more

Goodreads review by Emily on January 17, 2019

This book is quite difficult to review. I enjoyed Part 1 about the technological challenges humans will be faced with and how we can adapt. It reminded me that I need to read Homo Deus which hopefully will satisfy that craving for me. The rest of the book was more political, religious and philosophica......more

Goodreads review by Sean Barrs on November 15, 2020

I'd like to start by talking a little bit about Harari himself and the importance of this work. There are so many cynical academics out there, but very few devote their time and talent to actually creating work that could have a true benefit to humanity. It's all critical and very rarely constructiv......more


Quotes

“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)