‘Sapiens – A Brief History of Humankind in Pictures’ shows the appeal of history through its humorous style, multi-toned narrative, and vivid illustrations.
Perhaps many people have left high school with the impression that History is boring and boring. Events associated with numbers, dry, impersonal narratives that are unknown to anyone, stories that happened far and wide with relative timelines like “a few tens of thousands of years.” ”, “20-30 thousand years ago”… However, that feeling will disappear when the reader Sapiens – A brief history of mankind with pictures – episode 1: The beginning of mankind. The work was born from the cooperation of three authors Yuval Noah Harari, David Vandermeulen, Daniel Casanave. A special edition Before Sapiens – A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari, a Jewish-American historian has been well received by many readers, including Vietnamese readers. This book, though thick and heavy both literally and figuratively, has been hotly discussed by a wide audience. Reading him, one will go from one surprise to another and after reading it, there will be questions and reflections left in the mind. He has been very successful in making the reader, be it the average reader or the researcher, one more time pondering the true meaning of history. This time, the content that appeared in that book has been restructured, recreated in a special edition – the “picture” version. 
Book Sapiens – A Brief History of Humankind with Pictures, Volume 1. Photo: Omega Plus. Overseas, it is very common for a classic, famous, best-selling or influential work to appear in multiple versions for different audiences. However, even if it is the same basic expression of the same content, each version has its own uniqueness and appeal. Those who have read Sapiens-human history Before that, it would have been thrilling to flip open the book to see what the picture version was all about. The book opens with the foreword by Yuval Noah Harari: “Dedicated to extinction, loss, and oblivion. Everything fits and falls apart.” Reading this preface makes me feel like the author is more like a certain Eastern sage than a Western historian who likes to dissect and analyze. The book leads the reader to follow the history of the universe – earth and humanity along the time axis with a unique way of divergence: From the history of physics, to the history of chemistry, biology and finally The same is cultural history with 4 titles and 4 chapters: Rebels in the Prairie, Fictional Masters, Sex, Lies and Caves, Intercontinental Murderers. A special narrative As a picture version, of course the book’s great appeal comes from its visual and vividness. However, not only that, the appeal and uniqueness of the work lies in many other things. Firstly, the text in the book is written very succinctly, easy to understand, and highly generalizable. Reading a sentence, the reader can imagine an era of hundreds of thousands of years, even billions of years. For example, it is easy to find in books statements or interpretations like this: “About 14 billion years ago, matter, energy, time, and space were formed in the event we call it. is the big bang – the Big Bang. The story of these fundamental properties of the universe is called physics”; “The story of atoms and molecules and their interactions is called chemistry”; “The Story of Creatures Called Biology”; “The process of human cultural development is called history”… A lot of the tangled messes of our perception have been compressed, rearranged in a concise and logical order. 
The work of Yuval Noah Harari was well received and debated by many readers. Photo: Omega Plus. Second, the history that appears here is not a cold and frozen “impersonal” history. In this picture book, there will be many people telling about history such as historian Yuval Noah Harari, professor – biologist Saraswati, professor Dunbar – expert on human communication, even detective. López. This narrative technique called “multi-tonal narrative” has recently been applied in many countries to primary school history textbooks to increase the book’s appeal. This narrative, academically shows that to understand history one needs a lot of experts in many different fields, but at the same time creates the appeal of the story being told as history is seen. from many sides. Third, the history told in this pictorial version is a “continuous dialogue between historian and history, between present past and future” as EH Car put it. It is the dialogue between historian Yuval Harari and Zoe – a curious teenager curious; the dialogue of professors like Yuval Harari with archaeological evidence such as tools, fossils, relics left in the ground, between professors and the public in seminars, between present – past – future such as the trial of the Sapiens genocide of large mammals and the current threat of destroying the ecosystem of humans… The narrative style always changes the point of view from the present to the past, then from the past to reflect and relate to the present and future. Those are the journeys through time of modern people to many different times, on many different lands, making readers not feel tired. Harari has appeared in the book as a narrator who speaks directly to the reader. Finally, the humor. Humor makes the historical narrative charming and engaging. For example, when describing 6 human species that once existed on earth, with characteristics summarized on each portrait card, the authors described Homo Sapiens like this: “HOMO SAPIENS ANNUAL: THE FINALLY PEOPLE The human family 50,000 years ago. Location: anywhere, even on the moon Existence: 300,000 years ago to present. Probably going extinct before 2100. Characteristic: They think themselves wise above all else. Strengths: Good at crafting tools, from toothbrushes to intercontinental rockets. Weaknesses: Big ego. Or believe in nonsense.” Along with humor is the explanation, simile full of images. All of the above factors are mixed, reduced, and skillfully combined in the entire work, making it attractive to both adult readers and children over 13 years old.
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