What an excellent and thought-provoking book. Very needed and relevant in this modern world. Thank you for approving this title for me and I'm sorry it's taken so long for me to review.

I found it hard to get into this book, and lost interest in it. Each time I picked it I was reluctant to read it. I was disappointed.

I adore anything by Harari and this one is no different. Absolutely excellent book and a brilliant read. Recommend!

This was my first Harari after being recommended it on countless occasions by friends. Unfortunately, it’s a bit of a mixed bag for me. 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, unlike his previous works I understand, is an editorial series of loosely connected essays exploring the different challenges of the 21st century. His focus is expansive, examining everything from AI and data, the rise of right-wing rhetoric in the mainstream political dialogue, religions of the world and the future of war and terrorism.

Much of this I was fascinated by and quickly devoured. However… ultimately, it felt like he stretched himself too thinly, with each chapter end feeling rather like we had just barely scratched the surface on the topic. Whilst his observations and analysis remained, always, interesting and well researched, I felt like both the writer and the reader did not have time and space to process any of the messages or opinions throughout as the focus changed so frequently. By the time I reached the final page, I was left scratching my head as I realized I had retained very little of the content due to there simply being too much to absorb. To be clear, I did enjoy his writing and I will be picking up his other works; simply I think this would have worked much better as a series of volumes where he had given himself the space to fully explore his ‘lessons’.

Written in 2018, this is a fascinating read. Obviously it was published prior to the pandemic, so some situations have changed or been tested in unexpected ways. That said, I thoroughly enjoyed this exploration of the present socio-political situation, along with the various options put forward for the potential future we may find ourselves in.

One of the things the author says is that there's an aim of getting people thinking and the book certainly does that. I actually feel excited to explore all sorts of things. I'm digging through books, articles and websites with a view to finding out more about various things mentioned in the essays.

There is a logical progression to the essays that made the whole thing interesting and understandable. I've already been recommending it to friends and family and a physical copy is going on my Christmas list.

Unlike Sapiens (about the past) and Homo Deus (the future), 21 Lessons for the 21st Century is a series of commentaries, thoughts and meditations on the present. A historian, polymath, atheist and cynic, Harari is capable of insights of dazzling simplicity yet which are backed by deep reading and thought.

Having read Sapiens and Homo Deus previously by Harari, I was really looking forward to this. Written with customary searing clarity, I will be recommending this book to friends of Harari. Thanks NetGalley!

21 Lessons for the 21st Century is a loose collection of themed essays based on mind-expanding observations in our current lives. Covering everything from war to “fake news” and the rise of authoritarians such as Donald Trump, Yuval Noah Harari hits classic themes from his previous works, questioning our globalised world and the idea of a coherent nation-state being threatened.

Like his former writings, this book sees Harari enter that class of gurus who are assumed to be experts on everything. There are a lot of generalised, sweeping statements with little explanation and evidence which makes this join the leagues of pretentious and slightly pointless books that remain on the number one bestseller shelves.

Very different from SAPIENS and HOMO DEUS, and didn't really capture my imagination as much as those two (which inspired a lot of fiction in my brain!). This was more political rather than about humanity as a whole.
Thanks for the opportunity to review!

Like Harari’s previous books, ‘21 Lessons for the 21st Century’ takes a very broad look at the big issues facing humans in the decades to come including use of data, immigration and terrorism. There is a lot to digest here and much of it is fascinating. However, I wonder if such a general and sweeping approach really does justice to the huge amount of material covered. I hope readers use it as a springboard to seek out more nuanced and detailed information elsewhere about the topics that interest them.

I did not finish this book. I loved Homo Deus by Harari, so I was disappointed that I couldn't get through this. There was just a lot of discussion about major corporations and corporate America, which made it hard for me to get through. I don't know that this is a reflection of Harari's 'poor' writing - he's anything but a poor writer - but it read so differently from Homo Deus that I couldn't find myself enjoying it.

If this book were a sermon, you would leave the church fired up and inspired. Only later, when you were asked what the preacher said, you might find it difficult to retrace the whole argument.

The sermon analogy is a fair one - this is a collection of essays, spread over five broad themes challenging our confusing age – the technological challenge, the political challenge, despair and hope, truth, and resilience. Within each theme, Harari bounds, full of enthusiasm, through his twenty-one topics each with a provocative title : “Liberty – big data is watching you” - “War – never underestimate human stupidity” - “Education – change is the only constant”.

The strength of this approach is that you'll never be bored. The weakness is that in the rush to make points that fire the imagination, some grand generalities pop up that make you stop and think, but by the time you have thought, you're into the next paragraph and the next memorable assertion.

If there is a single broad message in the book, it is (I think) that bio-engineering, artificial intelligence and big data have so transformed the political, cultural, economic, and religious world that once shaped us that its familiar principles are not just irrelevant but could actually make matters worse. Probably so, but the machine-gun approach hides the occasional contradiction. At one point, Harari says that “technology might push billions out of work, a massive new useless class”, yet only a few pages later he points out that “fears that automation will create massive unemployment go back to the 19th century, and so far they have never materialised”.

You can forgive that sort of thing when you read insights like the claim that “by providing a continental military and economic protective shield, the EU arguably fostered local patriotism in places such as Flanders, Lombardy, Catalonia and Scotland” – or his argument that racism has become culturalism, and his suggestion that terrorism is like a fly in a china shop – “how does a fly destroy a china shop ? It finds a bull, gets inside its ear and starts buzzing. The bull goes wild …. And there is no shortage of short-tempered bulls in the world.”

Yes, it's a set of lessons from a teacher who has let his imagination run free so as to make his pupils sit up and want to learn. And if teacher contradicts himself from time to time, that's another useful moral to enlighten the average pupil.

I have no idea why people are raving about this book,

A self-opinionated, nationalistic view of the world and its current troubles. Nothing particularly new and a slow over-elaborate read.

Pompous in style but with little new thinking.

Books are for enjoying and learning from, This failed in both respects.

It took me a long time to get through this book because I could only take in so much information at once!
This is the first of Harari's books I have read but I will be looking out for his other works.
Well-researched with links to history, and educational, 21 lessons for the 21st Century imagined what life could be like for humans in as few as 30 years with the advances in technology that are happening everyday. The book explored various scenarios that could affect the way we view medical care, employment and even our own identity and how that may change as time passes. Some of these sounded like they could be quite exciting, some quite terrifying, but gave a reader a lot to think about.

It will be interesting to see what life really is like in 2050!
I received an eARC of this book from the publishers via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

We live in an age where life and everything around us appears to be moving at such a rapid pace. At times, that means we never have an opportunity to take stock and attempt to understand the world in which we live. Yuval Harari has taken the time to capture this thoughts and ideas in this book. It is incredibly well-written and whilst people may have other opinions, there is a wealth of information to be gleaned if if you may have differing views. At the very least, this book will provoke thoughts across a series of 21 topics. Combined with his 2 other books Homo Deus and Sapiens you should have a greater understanding of where the human race has come from, where it is now and where it may be heading in the future.
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I have so many thoughts and feelings about this book, and they are still not completely clear in my mind, but suffice to say, this book should be compulsory reading material for every member of the human race. That is all.

This is wonderful and would make a perfect gift for a friend or relative. Contains so much learning, it makes you want to share with everyone you know!

Just like Sapiens, this book is brilliant. Harari makes the complex seem accessible and the dry seem vibrant. A fantastic, scary, look at ourselves and the world before us, around us and in front of us. Highly recommended.

Full review to follow on blog.

Parts of this book were very disturbing, parts of made utter sense, other parts had me pondering, others had me scratching my head. But whatever it made me feel, it was written in such an accessible way that I was utterly absorbed by the whole book.

*** ARC provided by Netgalley via the publisher in exchange for an honest review. ***

Having read both Sapiens and Homo Deus by Yuvel Noah Harari I was extremely excited to get hold of his new novel. Once again, he doesn’t disappoint!

Harari has an excellent way of providing complex information, theories and ideas whilst making them digestible to the average reader. When reading his books I just can’t wait to recommend to friends so we can discuss the issues he touches and see what they think.

Of his three books, this is probably my least favourite but when considering how amazed and engrossed I was by the first two this is maybe an unfair way to judge the new book. This book is still probably the best non-fiction you will read this year and I would recommend/push all of Hariri’s books on anyone who’ll give me the time!