Yuval Noah Harari

Yuval Harari
250px Harari in 2011
Native name	יובל נח הררי
Born	(1976-02-24) February 24, 1976 Kiryat Ata, Israel
Residence	Mesilat Zion, Israel
Nationality	Israeli
Fields	History
Institutions	Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Alma mater	Hebrew University of Jerusalem Jesus College, Oxford
Thesis	History and I: War and the Relations between History and Personal Identity in Renaissance Military Memoirs, c. 1450-1600 (2002)
Doctoral advisor	Steven J. Gunn
Known for	Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
Influences	Jared Diamond
Notable awards	Polonsky Prize for Creativity and Originality (2009 and 2012) Society for Military History's Moncado Award Young Israeli Academy of Sciences National Library of China best book of the year award
Website www.ynharari.com

Yuval Noah Harari (born 24 February 1976) is a communist Israeli professor of history and the author of the international bestseller Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. He teaches at the Department of History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Life

Harari, who is of Mizrahi Jewish background, was born in Israel to Jewish Lebanese parents. He first specialized in medieval history and military history, and studied from 1993 to 1998 at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He completed his doctorate at Jesus College, Oxford, in 2002 under the supervision of Steven J. Gunn . From 2003 to 2005 he pursued Postdoctoral studies in history, as a Yad Hanadiv Fellow.

Since then, he has published numerous books and articles, including Special Operations in the Age of Chivalry, 1100–1550; The Ultimate Experience: Battlefield Revelations and the Making of Modern War Culture, 1450–2000; “The Concept of ‘Decisive Battles’ in World History”; and “Armchairs, Coffee and Authority: Eye-witnesses and Flesh-witnesses Speak about War, 1100-2000”.

He now specializes in World History and macro-historical processes. His research focuses on macro-historical questions such as: What is the relation between history and biology? What is the essential difference between Homo sapiens and other animals? Is there justice in history? Does history have a direction? Did people become happier as history unfolded?

His most recent book is titled Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (originally published in Hebrew under the title A Brief History of Mankind, and later translated into close to 30 languages). The book surveys the entire length of human history, from the evolution of Homo sapiens in the Stone Age up to the political and technological revolutions of the 21st century. The Hebrew edition has become a bestseller in Israel. It has generated much interest both in the academic community and among the general public and has turned Harari into an instant celebrity. YouTube Video clips of Harari’s Hebrew lectures on the history of the world have been viewed by tens of thousands of Israelis; He is also giving a free online course in English titled A Brief History of Humankind. More than 100,000 people throughout the world have already taken this course.

Harari twice won the Polonsky Prize for Creativity and Originality, in 2009 and 2012. In 2011 he won the Society for Military History’s Moncado Award for outstanding articles in military history. In 2012 he was elected to the Young Israeli Academy of Sciences. In 2015 Sapiens was selected by Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, for his online book club. Mark invited his followers to read what he describes as “a big history narrative of human civilisation”. "Harari is a vegan and the dire plight of animals, particularly domesticated animals, since the agricultural revolution is something he riffs on" in his writings.

Harari lives with his husband in moshav Mesilat Zion near Jerusalem.

Books

• Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (London: Harvill Secker, 2014) - ISBN 978-006-231-609-7
• Renaissance Military Memoirs: War, History and Identity, 1450–1600 (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2004) - ISBN 978-184-383-064-1
• Special Operations in the Age of Chivalry, 1100–1550 (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2007) - ISBN 978-184-383-292-8
• The Ultimate Experience: Battlefield Revelations and the Making of Modern War Culture, 1450–2000 (Houndmills: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2008) - ISBN 978-023-058-388-7
• The History of Tomorrow (Dvir publishing, 2015) - ISBN 978-965-552-988-3 (Hebrew)

Writings

• The Military Role of the Frankish Turcopoles – a Reassessment, Mediterranean Historical Review 12 (1) (June 1997), pp. 75–116.
• Inter-Frontal Cooperation in the Fourteenth Century and Edward III’s 1346 Campaign, War in History 6 (4) (September 1999), pp. 379–395
• Strategy and Supply in Fourteenth-Century Western European Invasion Campaigns, The Journal of Military History64 (2) (April 2000), pp. 297–334.
• Eyewitnessing in Accounts of the First Crusade: The Gesta Francorum and Other Contemporary Narratives, Crusades 3 (August 2004), pp. 77–99
• Martial Illusions: War and Disillusionment in Twentieth-Century and Renaissance Military Memoirs, The Journal of Military History 69 (1) (January 2005), pp. 43–72
• Military Memoirs: A Historical Overview of the Genre from the Middle Ages to the Late Modern Era, War in History 14:3 (2007), pp. 289–309
• The Concept of ‘Decisive Battles’ in World History, The Journal of World History 18 (3) (2007), 251-266
• Knowledge, Power and the Medieval Soldier, 1096–1550, in In Laudem Hierosolymitani: Studies in Crusades and Medieval Culture in Honour of Benjamin Z. Kedar, ed. Iris Shagrir, Ronnie Ellenblum and Jonathan Riley-Smith, (Ashgate, 2007)
• Combat Flow: Military, Political and Ethical Dimensions of Subjective Well-Being in War, Review of General Psychology (September, 2008)

External links

• Official website
• Meet the author – Yuval Harari video interview – BBC News
• Yuval Noah Harari at TED