Nexus

Subtitle: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

Author: Yuval Noah Harari

Genre: Nonfiction, History

Format: Digital ARC

Publish Date: September 2024

Read: June 2024

Favorite Quote: But power isn’t wisdom, and after 100,000 years of discoveries, inventions, and conquests humanity has pushed itself into an existential crisis.

Synopsis: In his latest book, Yuval Noah Harari, best known for his book Sapiens, explores humanity’s ability to share information throughout history. From our prehistoric days to present day, Harari examines how the spread of good and bad information shaped our realities. Harari touches on colonialism/imperialism, propaganda, and data collection throughout history as mechanisms for controlling what people know and believe.

Why does this book beguile? I read Sapiens many years ago, and I loved the way Harari consolidated so much information into a history book. Sapiens was one of the first books that excited me about history. I’ve since read all his other books, so I was delighted to get my hands on an Advanced Reader Copy of Nexus.

Unfortunately, I found Nexus highly repetitive, extreme, and alarmist. And, for full transparency, a bit boring. Nexus contains long chapters with winding stories that try to illustrate many “what if” scenarios on extreme ends of possibility. Perhaps they are not so extreme, but the “sky is falling” tone of the book distracted me from the information conveyed.

Rating: 3/5

Link*: Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI by Yuval Noah Harari

If you’re interested in this, read*: Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari