Why Mark Zuckerberg wants everyone to read an Israeli historian's book about the human race

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s 2015 New Year’s resolution was to read an important book every two weeks and discuss it with the Facebook community.

Zuckerberg’s book club, A Year of Books, has focused on big ideas that influence society and business. For his 12th pick, he’s gone with “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind” by Hebrew University of Jerusalem historian Yuval Harari.

First published in 2014, “Sapiens” is a critically acclaimed international best-seller. Harari uses his book to track the evolution of Homo sapiens from hunter-gatherers into self-empowered “gods” of the future.

“We control the world basically because we are the only animals that can cooperate flexibly in very large numbers,” Harari told NPR in February to promote the book’s US publication.

“And if you examine any large-scale human cooperation, you will always find that it is based on some fiction like the nation, like money, like human rights,” he said. “These are all things that do not exist objectively, but they exist only in the stories that we tell and that we spread around. This is something very unique to us, perhaps the most unique feature of our species.” ...