Humans: A Brief History of How We Fucked It All Up, Tom Phillips

Caution, mild spoilers ahead.

“In a list of ‘moves designed to piss lots of people off’, banning coffee in Turkey probably ranks somewhere alongside banning cheese in France, banning guns in America and … well, banning national stereotyping in Britain.”

Humans: A Brief History of How We Fucked It All Up by Tom Phillips is cynical and funny, it is direct and simple, and it depressing and true. It is one of those non-fiction books that you will enjoy reading from the first pages till the last ones. It has a fun opening and it keeps the same humor throughout the book.

Reading it, you will learn a lot and you will enjoy it too. It is filled with fun facts and even those that are not so fun are written with humor. All the stories lead to one and only objective. To show the reader how stupid we can be, wanting it or not, but inevitably leading our race to chaos.

This book underlines our biggest and most wrecking mistakes. Our efficiency in destroying the world around us, not worrying about our future; our capacity to change the world with unforeseen consequences, sometimes lead by one sole individual; and our determination to keep doing the same things we did in the past, even knowing they were not exactly the right choices.

Humans: A Brief History of How We Fucked It All Up is well researched, proposing unique and famous stories, which are entertaining and mind-opening.

But the most important thing, it helps to remind us that all of us make mistakes. Yes, some of them are horrible. And yes, we shouldn’t ever do the same. But we are all humans and it is okay to fuck up from time to time, hopefully, on a much smaller scale.