Yuval Noah Harari

Yuval Noah Harari
Harari in 2024
Yuval Noah Harari
Born	1976
Birthplace	Kiryat Ata, Israel
Nationality	Israeli
Occupation	Historian, author, professor
Employer	Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Known for	Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Homo Deus, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, Nexus
Education	DPhil, University of Oxford
Spouse(s)	Itzik Yahav

Yuval Noah Harari (Template:Lang-he; born 1976) is an Israeli historian, public intellectual, and author whose works on the broad sweep of human history have reached tens of millions of readers worldwide. A professor of history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Harari trained as a medievalist and military historian before turning his attention to macro-historical narratives that examine the trajectory of Homo sapiens from the Stone Age to an uncertain technological future. His first major book, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, published in Hebrew in 2011 and subsequently translated into dozens of languages, established him as one of the most widely read non-fiction writers of the early twenty-first century. He followed it with Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (2016), 21 Lessons for the 21st Century (2018), and Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI (2024). His work explores themes including free will, consciousness, intelligence, happiness, suffering, the role of storytelling in human evolution, and the social consequences of artificial intelligence. In 2019, Harari and his husband, Itzik Yahav, co-founded Sapienship, a social impact company focused on global responsibility, education, and the challenge of emerging technologies. Though his books have achieved enormous commercial success, his work has drawn mixed responses from academic historians and scientists, who have praised his ability to synthesize vast amounts of material while questioning some of his specific claims and generalizations.

Early Life

Yuval Noah Harari was born in 1976 in Kiryat Ata, a city in the Haifa District of northern Israel. He grew up in a secular Jewish family in Israel. Details of his childhood and family background beyond his birthplace remain limited in published sources, though Harari has discussed aspects of his upbringing in interviews. From an early age, he developed an interest in broad questions about history and the human condition, interests that would eventually shape his academic career and his popular writing.

Harari has spoken publicly about the formative influence of growing up in Israel, a country whose complex history and geopolitical situation impressed upon him questions about identity, conflict, and the narratives that societies construct to make sense of their past. In a 2015 interview with The Guardian, he discussed aspects of his personal development and intellectual formation, including how his perspective on history moved beyond the conventional boundaries of national narratives toward a species-wide view of human experience.

His early intellectual development in Israel's educational system laid the groundwork for his later academic pursues, first at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and subsequently at the University of Oxford.

Education

Harari pursued his undergraduate and master's studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he specialized in medieval history and military history. He subsequently went abroad for his doctoral work, enrolling at the University of Oxford. At Oxford, he completed his Doctor of Philosophy (DPhil) under the supervision of Steven Gunn. His doctoral thesis, completed in 2002, was titled "History and I: War and the Relations between History and Personal Identity in Renaissance Military Memoirs, c. 1450–1600."

The thesis examined how Renaissance soldiers and military writers constructed personal identity through the act of writing about their experiences of war, a topic that situated Harari at the intersection of military history, cultural history, and the study of narrative and self-representation. This early focus on how humans use stories to construct meaning and identity would prove to be a recurring theme throughout his later, more popular works.

Career

Academic Career

Following the completion of his doctorate at Oxford, Harari returned to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he joined the Department of History as a faculty member. His early academic work focused on medieval and early modern military history, consistent with his doctoral research on Renaissance military memoirs. He published several academic articles and papers on topics in military history, the history of warfare, and the relationship between personal experience and historical writing.

Over time, Harari's interests broadened from the specific study of medieval and Renaissance military culture to much larger questions about human history as a whole — an area sometimes described as "big history," which attempts to narrate the entire arc of the human past within a single analytical framework. This shift became apparent in his teaching at the Hebrew University, where he developed an undergraduate course on world history that sought to cover the entire span of the human experience from the emergence of Homo sapiens to the present day. The lectures from this course would form the basis of his first major book.

Harari remains a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where his academic position is in the Department of History, though his public profile has increasingly centered on his role as a writer and public intellectual rather than his work as a conventional academic historian.

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind was first published in Hebrew in 2011 and appeared in English translation in 2014. The book grew out of Harari's undergraduate world history lectures at the Hebrew University. In it, Harari traces the history of Homo sapiens from the species' origins in Africa approximately 300,000 years ago through to the present, organizing the narrative around a series of major transformations that he calls "revolutions."

Central to the book's argument is the concept of a "Cognitive Revolution" that occurred roughly 70,000 years ago, when Homo sapiens developed the capacity for complex language and, more importantly, the ability to create and believe in shared fictions — stories, myths, religions, nations, and economic systems that enabled large-scale cooperation among strangers. Harari argues that this capacity to create "imagined realities" is the defining feature that allowed Homo sapiens to supplant rival species such as Neanderthals and to rise to dominance over the planet. The book goes on to examine the Agricultural Revolution (beginning around 10,000 BCE), which Harari provocatively describes as "history's biggest fraud" for its role in creating social hierarchies and diminishing individual quality of life, and the Scientific Revolution (beginning around 1500 CE), which unleashed unprecedented growth in human knowledge and power.

Sapiens became a global bestseller, translated into more than 60 languages. It attracted high-profile endorsements from figures including Barack Obama, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg, and became a staple of recommended reading lists in business, technology, and public policy circles. However, the book's reception in academic circles was more complex. While scholars acknowledged Harari's skill in synthesizing enormous amounts of material into an accessible narrative, some criticized the book for oversimplification, factual errors, and sweeping generalizations that did not reflect the nuances of specialist research.

Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow

Harari's second major book, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, was published in Hebrew in 2015 and in English in 2016. Where Sapiens looked backward across the full span of human history, Homo Deus looked forward, examining the possible futures that emerging technologies — particularly biotechnology, artificial intelligence, and data science — might create for the human species.

The book's central thesis is that having largely overcome the historical scourges of famine, plague, and war (at least in their most devastating forms), humanity in the twenty-first century is increasingly turning its attention to new aspirations: achieving immortality, engineering happiness, and upgrading human capabilities to god-like levels — hence the title, "Homo Deus" (Latin for "God Man"). Harari explores the possibility that these pursuits could lead to the emergence of a new kind of being that transcends Homo sapiens as currently understood, or alternatively, that artificial intelligence and algorithms could render much of humanity economically and politically irrelevant.

The Guardian reviewed Homo Deus upon its English-language publication, noting Harari's ambitious scope and willingness to engage with speculative scenarios about humanity's future. The Financial Times also covered the book's themes, discussing Harari's argument that data-driven algorithms could become the dominant force shaping human society.

Harari stated in interviews that "Homo sapiens as we know them will disappear in a century or so," a claim that attracted both attention and criticism.

21 Lessons for the 21st Century

Published in 2018, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century represented a departure from the grand historical narratives of Harari's first two books, instead focusing on the most pressing issues of the present moment. Organized into 21 chapters, the book addresses topics including technological disruption, the rise of artificial intelligence, the crisis of liberal democracy, terrorism, immigration, secularism, nationalism, and the practice of meditation.

The book received mixed reviews upon publication. The Guardian reviewed it as an attempt to apply the analytical framework of Sapiens and Homo Deus to current affairs, noting both the book's ambition and its occasional tendency toward generalization. The Evening Standard published a review that engaged with the book's thematic breadth. The New Statesman published a sharply critical review that characterized the book as "banal and risible" and compared it unfavorably to a self-help manual, arguing that Harari's attempts to address contemporary political and social questions lacked the depth and rigor of specialist analysis.

Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

Harari's fourth major book, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI, was published in 2024. The book examines the history of information networks and their role in shaping human societies, from ancient storytelling and bureaucratic record-keeping through the printing press and mass media to the contemporary challenges posed by social media and artificial intelligence.

A review in the Tillamook County Pioneer in 2026 noted the book's focus on AI and its implications for society, describing it as an exploration of how information networks have shaped human cooperation and conflict throughout history.

The themes of Nexus have informed much of Harari's public commentary in 2025 and 2026, particularly his warnings about the social and political consequences of artificial intelligence.

Public Intellectual and Commentator

Beyond his books, Harari has become a prominent public intellectual whose views on technology, politics, and the future of humanity are regularly sought by major media outlets, international forums, and political leaders. He has delivered multiple TED talks on topics including the future of humanity and the implications of artificial intelligence.

In January 2026, Harari spoke at the World Economic Forum in Davos, where he argued that artificial intelligence would create two crises for every country: an identity crisis and an economic crisis. He stated that AI's capacity to generate stories, images, and even entire cultural products would force nations to reconsider fundamental questions about what it means to be human and how economies should be structured. In a separate interview with Business Insider around the same time, he argued that AI's deepest social and political consequences would unfold over centuries rather than years, and expressed concern about what he called a "lack of concern" in the present moment about long-term implications.

In a 2025 interview with Big Think, Harari discussed the concept of "mass delusion" in advanced societies, arguing that the core problem lies in the quality of information available to citizens. "Humans, yes, we are generally good and wise, but if you give good people bad information, they make bad [decisions]," he stated. In a separate Big Think interview, he discussed the challenge of safeguarding mental autonomy in what he described as an age of "junk information," highlighting what he saw as the fundamental incompatibility between human cognitive capacities and the "always-on" nature of digital information systems.

In an article published by the International Monetary Fund in late 2025, Harari discussed what he termed "humankind's comparative advantage," arguing that humans have dominated the planet through their capacity for storytelling but may soon "no longer hold the pen" as AI systems become capable of generating narratives and cultural products autonomously.

In July 2025, Harari participated in a public conversation with Stephen Fry on the topic "AI: How Can We Control An Alien Intelligence?" in which they discussed the challenges of governing AI systems that operate according to fundamentally different principles than human cognition.

Harari has also engaged publicly with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In November 2025, the Financial Times published an opinion piece by Harari in which he argued that "only generosity can secure peace between Israelis and Palestinians," calling on both sides to "abandon false moral certainties and oversimplified historical narratives" in order to break the cycle of violence.

Sapienship

In 2019, Harari and his husband, Itzik Yahav, co-founded Sapienship, described as a social impact company. The organization's stated mission is to promote global responsibility by encouraging trust and cooperation among people through the telling and retelling of shared human stories. Sapienship focuses on research, content development, education, and the publication of position papers addressing global challenges, particularly in the areas of technology and the future world order. The company has also launched educational content on social media platforms, including an official educational Instagram page.

Personal Life

Harari is married to Itzik Yahav, who also serves as his business partner and manager. The couple co-founded Sapienship in 2019. Harari has spoken openly in interviews about his identity as a gay man in Israel and about his relationship with Yahav.

Harari is a practitioner of Vipassanā meditation, which he has described as an important influence on his thinking and writing. He has stated that he first began practicing Vipassana meditation in 2000 and that the practice has shaped his understanding of consciousness, suffering, and the nature of the mind — themes that recur throughout his published work. In 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, meditation is discussed as one of the tools available to individuals seeking to understand their own minds in an age of information overload and technological disruption.

Harari has stated that he is a vegan. He lives in a moshav near Jerusalem.

Recognition

Harari's books have been translated into more than 60 languages and have sold millions of copies worldwide. Sapiens in particular has appeared on numerous bestseller lists and recommended reading lists from prominent figures in business, technology, and politics.

However, Harari's work has received a more complex reception within academic circles. While scholars have acknowledged his ability to synthesize large amounts of information and present it in an accessible format, a number of historians, anthropologists, and scientists have raised concerns about oversimplification, factual inaccuracies, and the tendency to present speculative claims as established facts. The New Statesman review of 21 Lessons for the 21st Century characterized the book as lacking the depth expected of serious non-fiction on the topics it addressed.

Despite these criticisms, Harari's influence on public discourse about history, technology, and the future of humanity is substantial. His TED talks have been viewed millions of times, and his commentary is regularly featured in major international publications including the Financial Times, The Guardian, and Business Insider. He has been invited to speak at institutions including the World Economic Forum and has been consulted by political leaders and technology executives on questions related to the social impact of emerging technologies.

Legacy

Harari's principal contribution to public intellectual life lies in his effort to make large-scale historical thinking accessible to a general audience. The commercial success of Sapiens and its sequels demonstrated a substantial global appetite for books that attempt to tell the story of the entire human species within a single narrative framework. In doing so, Harari helped popularize the field of "big history" — an approach that situates human civilization within the broadest possible context, from the origins of the universe to speculative futures.

His emphasis on the role of shared fictions and narratives in enabling human cooperation — the idea that concepts such as nations, religions, money, and human rights are "imagined realities" that exist only because large numbers of people believe in them — has entered mainstream public discourse and influenced how many non-specialists think about the foundations of social order.

In more recent years, Harari has positioned himself as a prominent voice in debates about the social and political implications of artificial intelligence. His argument, articulated across multiple books and public appearances, is that AI represents not merely a technological shift but a fundamental challenge to the human capacity for meaning-making that has defined the species since the Cognitive Revolution. As he stated in his IMF article, humans may have dominated the planet through storytelling, but they may soon find that they "no longer hold the pen."

The tension between Harari's popular success and his more mixed academic reception reflects broader questions about the role of public intellectuals in an age of increasing specialization. His work continues to generate debate about the appropriate balance between accessibility and scholarly rigor, and about the responsibilities of writers who address millions of readers on subjects of profound complexity.