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  • Published: 3 April 2017
  • ISBN: 9781784703936
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 528
  • RRP: $24.99

Homo Deus

A Brief History of Tomorrow




Sapiens showed us where we came from. Homo Deus shows us where we're going.

**THE MILLION COPY BESTSELLER**

Sapiens showed us where we came from. In uncertain times, Homo Deus shows us where we're going.

'Homo Deus will shock you. It will entertain you. It will make you think in ways you had not thought before' Daniel Kahneman, bestselling author of Thinking, Fast and Slow

Yuval Noah Harari envisions a near future in which we face a new set of challenges. Homo Deus explores the projects, dreams and nightmares that will shape the twenty-first century and beyond - from overcoming death to creating artificial life.

It asks the fundamental questions: how can we protect this fragile world from our own destructive power? And what does our future hold?

  • Published: 3 April 2017
  • ISBN: 9781784703936
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 528
  • RRP: $24.99

About the author

Yuval Noah Harari

Prof Yuval Noah Harari has a PhD in History from the University of Oxford and now lectures at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, specialising in World History. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind has become an international phenomenon attracting a legion of fans from Bill Gates and Barack Obama to Chris Evans and Jarvis Cocker, and is published in over forty-five languages worldwide. It was a Sunday Times Number One bestseller and was in the Top Ten for over nine months in paperback. His follow-up to Sapiens, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow was also a Top Ten Bestseller and was described by the Guardian as ‘even more readable, even more important, than his excellent Sapiens’.

Also by Yuval Noah Harari

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Praise for Homo Deus

Brilliant, mind-expanding…explores where Homo Sapiens might go from here, via his signature blend of science, history, philosophy and every discipline in between.

Bookseller

Homo Deus will shock you. It will entertain you. Above all, it will make you think in ways you had not thought before.

Daniel Kahneman, author of Thinking, Fast and Slow

Spellbinding… This is a very intelligent book, full of sharp insights and mordant wit... It is a quirky and cool book, with a sliver of ice at its heart... It is hard to imagine anyone could read this book without getting an occasional, vertiginous thrill.

David Runciman, Guardian

Yuval Noah Harari is the most entertaining and thought-provoking writer of non-fiction at the moment. In Homo Deus he covers broad terrain, touching on everything from Zen Buddhism to the Second World War to how bats read the frequency of echoes, to explore the largest most difficult and sometimes frightening subject of all: our own future. As with Sapiens you finish the book feeling much wiser, but not having noticed any hard work along the way. I loved this book.

Matt Haig

Sapiens was a paean to humanity’s powers of collective imagination…with darker notes on how these mega-stories might direct our new, transformative, information and biological technologies. "Is there anything more dangerous than dissatisfied and irresponsible gods who don’t know what they want?" was Harari’s closing line. Homo Deus tries to answer that question, with all the pedagogic and encyclopaedic brilliance of its predecessor.

New Scientist

A remarkable book, full of insights and thoughtful reinterpretations of what we thought we knew about ourselves and our history... One measure of Harari’s achievement is that one has to look a long way back – to 1934, in fact, the year when Lewis Mumford’s Technics and Civilization was published – for a book with comparable ambition and scope.

John Naughton, Guardian

Like its predecessor, which sold in its millions, Homo Deus will have a world audience. Taking over where Sapiens left off, it looks forward to where history, ethics and gargantuan biotech investment might lead us - to the end, Harari thinks, of death, suffering and the very idea of being human.

James McConnachie, Sunday Times Culture

An often thought-provoking and always elegantly written book.

Steven Poole, Spectator

Harari is an intellectual magpie who has plucked theories and data from many disciplines - including philosophy, theology, computer science and biology - to produce a brilliantly original, thought-provoking and important study of where mankind is heading.

Saul David, Evening Standard

Like all great epics, Sapiens demanded a sequel. Homo Deus, in which that likely apocalyptic future is imagined in spooling detail, is that book. It is a highly seductive scenario planner for the numerous ways in which we might overreach ourselves.

Tim Adams, Observer

His reasoning is laid out with a lucidity that makes it a joy to read.

UK Press Syndication

I think the mark of a great book is that it not only alters the way you see the world after you've read it, it also casts the past in a different light. In Homo Deus, Yuval Noah Harari shows us where mankind is headed in an absolutely clear-sighted & accessible manner. I don't normally ask for autographs but I got a bit starstruck & asked him to sign my copy of his book after we'd had a conversation for my show on BBC 6Music. His inscription reads: 'The future is in your hands' - a good thing to remember when such great changes are afoot.

Jarvis Cocker, Mail on Sunday

Harari is an exceptional writer, who seems to have been specially chosen by the muses as a conduit for the zeitgeist… Fascinating reading.

Stephen Cave, Times Literary Supplement

Sets out with enviable (and alarming) lucidity the massive challenges now facing our species as genetic technologies, AI and robotics alter forever our relationships with one another and with other species. It’s even more readable, even more important, than his excellent Sapiens.

Kazuo Ishiguro, Guardian Books of the Year

Homo Deus is a sweeping, apocalyptic history of the human race, which reads more like a TED-talk on acid.

Norman Lewis, Spiked

An exhilarating book that takes the reader deep into questions of identity, consciousness and intelligence… Harari is a naturally gifted explainer, invariably ready with a telling anecdote or memorable analogy. As a result, it’s tempting to see him less as historian than as some kind of all-purpose sage.

Andrew Anthony, Observer

This provocative book analyses our present state – and makes startling predictions about the future.

Mail on Sunday

Sapiens showed us where we came from. Homo Deus shows us where we’re going

Eastern Daily Press

Challenging, readable and thought-provoking… He has provided a smart look at what may be ahead for humanity.

Time

An intoxicating brew of science, philosophy and futurism.

Mail on Sunday

Exhilarating.

Nick Curtis, Evening Standard

Shows us where mankind is headed in an absolutely clear-sighted and accessible manner

Jarvis Cocker

Even more readable, even more important, than his excellent Sapiens

Kazuo Ishiguro, Guardian Books of the Year

An exhilarating book that takes the reader deep into questions of identity, consciousness and intelligence

Observer

A brilliantly original, thought-provoking and important study of where mankind is heading.

Evening Standard

Spellbinding… a quirky and cool book, with a sliver of ice at its heart

Guardian

Yuval Noah Harari is the most entertaining and thought-provoking writer of non-fiction at the moment. As with Sapiens, you finish the book feeling much wiser

Matt Haig

Original, compelling, and provocative.

Gary Ogden, Shortlist

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Homo Deus book club notes

Transport your reading group to our not-too-distant future.