21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari – Book Review

21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Yuval Noah Harari has become one of my favorite non-fiction authors. I have read Sapiens and had immediately bought the paperback copies for Sapiens and Homo Deus. My husband has read both Sapiens and Homo Deus and both books are just great conversation starters. We have stayed up late into nights with our drinks on weekends, discussing the subjects covered in both books.

So when I had an opportunity to read an ARC for 21 Lessons for the 21st Century from Netgalley, I was delighted!!

There are some common themes in all three of the books, that some people might find repetitive. But if you can ignore that, this third installment of essays and discussions on what we can try to do to prepare for the future, felt very relevant and made for an interesting read. I also love the fact that he conveys some very complex subjects in an easy to read manner and has a very good structure to his book. Add to that the tons of references and the amount of research his team has done for him to complete all the three books, just makes you admire him and his team and the books a lot more.

Now Yuval Harai is not a philosopher and he is not a monk or a Godman. He is a scientist. He will give you facts with evidence carried out from research. And then he tries to extrapolate this into probable future scenarios. However, this is not to be taken as a totality. He himself says this in his books, that his predictions are based on current trends and some speculation.

However, in this third book, he does give us an insight on what he thinks we could focus on to prepare for the future. Which political framework will work? What society model will work? What will the future biases be on? How do we prepare for economic sustainability based on technological disruptions? What skills should we impart our children with? What ethical and philosophical models are available to us to answer life’s big questions? We get the different options and the author’s own preference. However, there are a lot of unanswered questions too, but that is normal isn’t it? No one today has the answers to everything really.

I really enjoyed reading this book and in general would recommend all three of Yuval Noah Harari’s books to anyone looking for an interesting non fiction read.