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FROM THE SHARED SHELF · 2006–2026 SAMPLE

Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs

Johann Hari

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THE WORD OF MOUTH

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Original Hacker News comments, in the readers’ own words.

nindalf
I loved Sapiens. It has a couple of ideas that help explain so much of our world - really powerful ideas. Once you know them they seem so obvious and you feel like you should have thought of that yourself. For example, (spoilers for human history ahead), our civilations are based on agriculture and very few hunter gatherers remain. But that doesn't mean that people consciously chose one over the other. It's just that for various reasons, agriculture is a more "viral" idea that spread more efficiently than the alternative. Ditto with monotheistic vs polytheistic religions. Homo Deus... less so. It rehashes a lot of Sapiens and I found it a bit of a drag. The introduction is worth reading though. He recounts all the progress we've made as a species, which would surprise people who think our world is growing worse by the day. Chasing the Scream was amazing. Nothing more to be said.…