Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari

 

I really enjoyed this - showed me lots of human history I didn't know.
It was an easy romp through time.

However - 

I thought it was going to be more about why Homo sapiens survived when other homo species  failed.

I thought there was a lot of exaggeration and sensationalism - to quote the Guardian's review "his account of the battle of Navarino. Starting from the fact that British investors stood to lose money if the Greeks lost their war of independence, Harari moves fast: "the bond holders' interest was the national interest, so the British organised an international fleet that, in 1827, sank the main Ottoman flotilla in the battle of Navarino. After centuries of subjugation, Greece was finally free." This is wildly distorted – and Greece was not then free. To see how bad it is, it's enough to look at the wikipedia entry on Navarino"