February 22, 2017

Yuval Noah Harari

Harvard Book Store welcomes the bestselling author of Sapiens YUVAL NOAH HARARI for a discussion of his latest book, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow. Harari will be joined in conversation by Harvard's MICHAEL SANDEL, author of Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? and What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets. This event is co-sponsored by the Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School.

Details

Yuval Noah Harari, author of the critically-acclaimed New York Times bestseller and international phenomenon Sapiens, returns with an equally original, compelling, and provocative book, turning his focus toward humanity’s future, and our quest to upgrade humans into gods.

Over the past century humankind has managed to do the impossible and rein in famine, plague, and war. This may seem hard to accept, but, as Harari explains in his trademark style—thorough, yet riveting—famine, plague and war have been transformed from incomprehensible and uncontrollable forces of nature into manageable challenges. For the first time ever, more people die from eating too much than from eating too little; more people die from old age than from infectious diseases; and more people commit suicide than are killed by soldiers, terrorists and criminals put together. The average American is a thousand times more likely to die from binging at McDonalds than from being blown up by Al Qaeda.

What then will replace famine, plague, and war at the top of the human agenda? As the self-made gods of planet earth, what destinies will we set ourselves, and which quests will we undertake? Homo Deus explores the projects, dreams and nightmares that will shape the twenty-first century—from overcoming death to creating artificial life. It asks the fundamental questions: Where do we go from here? And how will we protect this fragile world from our own destructive powers? This is the next stage of evolution. This is Homo Deus.

With the same insight and clarity that made Sapiens an international hit and a New York Times bestseller, Harari maps out our future.

About Author(s)

Dr. Yuval Harari has a PhD in history from the University of Oxford and now lectures at the Department of History, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, specializing in world history. His first book, Sapiens, was translated into over 40 languages and became a bestseller in the US, UK, France, China, Korea, and numerous other countries.

Michael Sandel is the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Government at Harvard University. His books explore some of the most hotly contested moral and political issues of our time. Sandel's titles include What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of MarketsJustice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?The Case against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic EngineeringPublic Philosophy: Essays on Morality in PoliticsDemocracy’s Discontent: America in Search of a Public Philosophy; and Liberalism and the Limits of Justice. His writings have been translated into 27 languages, and have appeared in The Atlantic MonthlyThe New Republic, and The New York Times. His course "Justice" is the first Harvard course to be made freely available online and on television. It has been viewed by tens of millions of people around the world, including in China, where Sandel was named the “most influential foreign figure of the year.” (China Newsweek)