Describe a book that interested you

The book I'll describe is Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari, which I read about three years ago. It's a history of humans, but not the kind organised by dates and kings. It's organised by ideas — how farming changed us, how money works as a shared fiction, why we can cooperate in large groups when other animals can't. I read it during a period when I was commuting about ninety minutes a day, so it took me maybe five weeks, in twenty-minute pieces on the bus. Why did it interest me? One specific argument, really. He suggests the agricultural revolution may have made individual lives worse — longer hours, worse diet, more disease — while making the species more successful. I'd always assumed progress meant things got better for people. That chapter separated two things I'd been treating as one: what's good for a population and what's good for a person. I don't agree with all of it, and I've since read people who argue he oversimplifies, which he probably does. But it's the book that taught me a habit I still have — asking "better for whom?" whenever someone says something improved. I've given away three copies. Which is a slightly annoying thing to say about a book, but it's true.