Interesting and afresh take in the subject. Some challenging chapters but overall very accessible book on the subject.

A supremely daft account of how humans have managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Written in a convivial style which is supremely tweetable. Some of the examples were already known to me, but were no less entertaining.

I enjoyed this but couldn’t read it in one go. I would read a chapter and then something else. I do feel I learnt through reading it and really enjoyed the humour. 70,000 years in one book and I learnt as I went, definately a fun read.
Thanks to Wildfire and NetGalley for an ARC.
#HumansFml #NetGalley

I naively thought this might be like a mini version of Sapiens, which I enjoyed so much, but I was very wrong. It’s the definition of pop-sci, with a VERY informal style which I found almost hard to read at times and essentially consists of mini stories from history written in continuous pros, split up into chapters. Yes, I bagged some new editions to the fun facts bank but I almost stopped reading at least three times as I felt it to be a waste of my time. And this is coming from someone who loves history and popular science books. Positives are it’s a quick read and has a fantastic section on famous ‘manias’ (did you know that there were many outbreaks of inexplicable, uncontrollable dancing in the Middle Ages?) which I haven’t forgot.

Humans is a book you will learn lots of new information from, and not only that but what you do learn is interesting and engaging, albeit a little depressing. To create a contrast between the darkness of most of what we are told, Phillips adds humour which lightens the mood somewhat. The style of writing is eminently readable and flows smoothly from one point to the next without trouble. This is such original non-fiction, and it appears the author has carried out extensive research to find these unique stories that I have not encountered in any other books previous to this. Each of the stories are varied and intriguing enough that I am still thinking about some of them, even long after I turned the final page. They range from stories about the fails of our earliest ancestors right through to ones we are currently making right now!

Well worth picking up, especially for history buffs and those who enjoy factually correct stories that teach us valuable lessons about how fallible we really are as a species. However, whether we learn from them or not is a different matter entirely and as this book illustrates, it's not always as easy or black and white as it seems.

Many thanks to Wildfire for an ARC. I was not required to post a review, and all thoughts and opinions expressed are my own.

Completely different from what I’d usually read, really enjoyed the way it was written and the humour behind it. I’ve learnt lots of new things about our history!