The New Yorker - February 17-24 2020

48 THENEWYORKER,FEBRUARY 17 &24, 2020

PROFILES

THE REALLY BIG PICTURE

Yuval Noah Harari, the author of “Sapiens,” suggests that many of our political struggles barely matter.

I

n 2008, Yuval Noah Harari, a young
historian at the Hebrew University
of Jerusalem, began to write a book
derived from an undergraduate world-
history class that he was teaching.
Twenty lectures became twenty chap-
ters. Harari, who had previously writ-
ten about aspects of medieval and early-
modern warfare—but whose intellectual
appetite, since childhood, had been for
all-encompassing accounts of the
world—wrote in plain, short sentences
that displayed no anxiety about the ac-
ademic decorum of a study spanning
hundreds of thousands of years. It was
a history of everyone, ever. The book,
published in Hebrew as “A Brief His-
tory of Humankind,” became an Israeli
best-seller; then, as “Sapiens,” it became
an international one. Readers were
offered the vertiginous pleasure of ac-
quiring apparent mastery of all human
affairs—evolution, agriculture, econom-
ics—while watching their personal nar-
ratives, even their national narratives,
shrink to a point of invisibility. Presi-
dent Barack Obama, speaking to CNN
in 2016, compared the book to a visit
he’d made to the pyramids of Giza.
“Sapiens” has sold more than twelve
million copies. “Three important revo-
lutions shaped the course of history,” the
book proposes. “The Cognitive Revolu-
tion kick-started history about 70,000
years ago. The Agricultural Revolution
sped it up about 12,000 years ago. The
Scientific Revolution, which got under
way only 500 years ago, may well end
history and start something completely
different.” Harari’s account, though
broadly chronological, is built out of as-
sured generalization and comparison
rather than dense historical detail. “Sa-
piens” feels like a study-guide summary
of an immense, unwritten text—or, less
congenially, like a ride on a tour bus that
never stops for a poke around the ruins.

(“As in Rome, so also in ancient China:

most generals and philosophers did not

think it their duty to develop new weap-

ons.”) Harari did not invent Big History,

but he updated it with hints of self-help

and futurology, as well as a high-altitude,

almost nihilistic composure about human

suffering. He attached the time frame of

aeons to the time frame of punditry—

of now, and soon. His narrative of flux,

of revolution after revolution, ended ur-

gently, and perhaps conveniently, with a

cliffhanger. “Sapiens,” while acknowl-

edging that “history teaches us that what

seems to be just around the corner may

never materialise,” suggests that our spe-

cies is on the verge of a radical redesign.

Thanks to advances in computing, cy-

borg engineering, and biological engi-

neering, “we may be fast approaching a

new singularity, when all the concepts

that give meaning to our world—me,

you, men, women, love and hate—will

become irrelevant.”

Harari, who is slim, soft-spoken, and

relentless in his search for an audience,

has spent the years since the publica-

tion of “Sapiens” in conversations about

this cliffhanger. His two subsequent

best-sellers—“Homo Deus” (2017) and

“21 Lessons for the 21st Century”

(2018)—focus on the present and the

near future. Harari now defines him-

self as both a historian and a philoso-

pher. He dwells particularly on the

possibility that biometric monitoring,

coupled with advanced computing, will

give corporations and governments ac-

cess to more complete data about peo-

ple—about their desires and liabilities—

than people have about themselves. A

life under such scrutiny, he said recently,

is liable to become “one long, stressing

job interview.”

If Harari weren’t always out in pub-

lic, one might mistake him for a recluse.

He is shyly oracular. He spends part of

almost every appearance denying that

he is a guru. But, when speaking at con-

ferences where C.E.O.s meet public in-

tellectuals, or visiting Mark Zucker-

berg’s Palo Alto house, or the Élysée

Palace, in Paris, he’ll put a long finger

to his chin and quietly answer ques-

tions about Neanderthals, self-driving

cars, and the series finale of “Game of

Thrones.” Harari’s publishing and speak-

ing interests now occupy a staff of twelve,

who work out of a sunny office in Tel

Aviv, where an employee from Peru

cooks everyone vegan lunches. Here,

one can learn details of a scheduled

graphic novel of “Sapiens”—a cartoon

version of Harari, wearing wire-framed

glasses and looking a little balder than

in life, pops up here and there, across

time and space. There are also plans

for a “Sapiens” children’s book, and a

multi-season “Sapiens”-inspired TV

drama, covering sixty thousand years,

with a script by the co-writer of Mel

Gibson’s “Apocalypto.”

Harari seldom goes to this office. He

works at the home he shares with Itzik

Yahav, his husband, who is also his agent

and manager. They live in a village of

expensive modern houses, half an hour

inland from Tel Aviv, at a spot where Is-

rael’s coastal plain is first interrupted by

hills. The location gives a view of half

the country and, hazily, the Mediterra-

nean beyond. Below the house are the

ruins of the once mighty Canaanite city

of Gezer; Harari and Yahav walk their

dog there. Their swimming pool is blob-

shaped and, at night, lit a vivid mauve.

At lunchtime one day in September,

Yahav drove me to the house from Tel

Aviv, in a Porsche S.U.V. with a rain-

bow-flag sticker on its windshield. “Yu-

val’s unhappy with my choice of car,”

Yahav said, laughing. “He thinks it’s un-

acceptable that a historian should have

money.” While Yahav drove, he had a

Harari, who is slim, soft-spoken, and relentless in his search for an audience, defines himself as both a historian and a philosopher.

BY IAN PARKER