Sapiens
The whole human story in one book, from insignificant apes to rulers of the world.
The back page says it best:
- Fire gave us power.
- Gossip helped us cooperate.
- Agriculture made us hungry for more.
- Mythology maintained law and order.
- Money gave us something we can really trust.
- Contradictions created culture.
- Science made us deadly.
Harari tells it through three turns. The Cognitive Revolution, when we started to think and talk in new ways. The Agricultural Revolution, when we settled down. The Scientific Revolution, when we admitted we did not know everything and went looking.
The big idea: we cooperate in huge numbers because we share stories. Nations, money, laws, companies. He calls them imagined orders. They exist because enough of us believe in them.
Two lines that stuck. The Agricultural Revolution was history’s biggest fraud. And, about wheat: We did not domesticate wheat. It domesticated us.
It makes you look at ordinary things, a banknote, a border, a brand, and see a story everyone agreed on. 
