Humans: A Brief History of How We F*cked It All Up

by Tom Phillips

Overview

“If Sapiens was a testament to human sophistication, this history of failure cheerfully reminds us that humans are mostly idiots.” —Greg Jenner, author of A Million Years in a Day

Now an International Bestseller

A Toronto Star–Bestselling Book of the Year

Modern humans have come a long way in the seventy thousand years they’ve walked the earth. Art, science, culture, trade—on the evolutionary food chain, we’re true winners. But it hasn’t always been smooth sailing, and sometimes—just occasionally—we’ve managed to truly f*ck things up.

Weaving together history, science, politics and pop culture, Humans offers a panoramic exploration of humankind in all its glory, or lack thereof. From Lucy, our first ancestor, who fell out of a tree and died, to General Zhou Shou of China, who stored gunpowder in his palace before a lantern festival, to the Austrian army attacking itself one drunken night, to the most spectacular fails of the present day, Humans reveals how even the most mundane mistakes can shift the course of civilization as we know it. Lively, wry and brimming with brilliant insight, this unique compendium offers a fresh take on world history and is one of the most entertaining reads of the year.

“It’s hard to imagine someone other than Phillips pulling off a 250+ page roast of mankind, but his perfect blend of brilliance and goofiness makes it a joy to read.” —Buzzfeed

“With the delicate touch of a scholar and the laugh-out-loud chops of a comedian, Tom Phillips shows us how our species has been messing things up . . . [for] four million years.” —Steve Brusatte, New York Times–bestselling author

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781488051135
Publisher:	Harlequin
Publication date:	01/18/2023
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	264
Sales rank:	436,392
File size:	11 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Tom Phillips is an author and journalist from London. He is currently the editor of Full Fact, the UK’s independent fact checking organisation; before that, he was editorial director at BuzzFeed UK. His previous book, Humans: A Brief History of How We F*cked It All Up (a history of failure through the ages), was published in 2018 and has sold in 30 territories worldwide.

Table of Contents

Prologue: The Dawn of Fuck-Ups 15

1 Why Your Brain Is an Idiot 27

2 Nice Environment You've Got Here 49

3 Life, Uh, Finds a Way 71

4 Follow the Leader 91

5 People Power 119

6 War. Huh. What Is ft Good For? 137

7 Super Happy Fun Colonialism Party 161

8 A Dummies' and/or Current Presidents' Guide to Diplomacy 199

9 The Shite Heat of Technology 223

10 A Brief History of Not Seeing Things Coming 255

Epilogue: Fucking Up the Future 271

Acknowledgments 283

Further Reading 287

Picture Credits 291

About the Author 295

Index 299

Editorial Reviews

Tom Phillips has proven beyond a doubt that humans are goddamn lucky to be here and are doing nearly nothing to remain relevant and viable as a species—except, that is, for writing witty, entertaining, and slightly distressing-but-ultimately-endearing books about same. And if you care to avoid orbiting the earth in a space-garbage prison of your fellow humans’ design, you should probably read it.”—Sarah Knight, New York Times bestselling author of Get Your Sh*t Together

"Humans is Tom Phillips' timely, irreverent gallop through thousands of years of human stupidity. Every time you begin to find our foolishness bizarrely comforting , Phillips adds another kick in the ribs. Beneath all this book's laughter is a serious question: where does so much serial stupidity take us?"—Nicholas Griffin, author of Ping-Pong Diplomacy: The Secret History Behind the Game That Changed the World

"Tom Phillips is a very clever, very funny man, and it shows. If Sapiens was a testament to human sophistication, this history of failure cheerfully reminds us that humans are mostly idiots."–Greg Jenner, author of A Million Years in a Day

"Chronicles humanity’s myriad follies down the ages with malicious glee and much wit... a rib-tickling page-turner,"—Business Standard

“A laugh-along, worst-hits album for humanity. With the delicate touch of a scholar and the laugh-out-loud chops of a comedian, Tom Phillips shows how our species has been messing things up ever since we evolved from apes and came down from the trees some 4 million years ago.”—Steve Brusatte, University of Edinburgh palaeontologist and New York Times bestselling author of The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs

“Humans is a thoroughly entertaining account of unintended consequences, of arrogance and ignorance, of human follies and foibles from ancient times to the present. It seems history has taught us nothing—we are doomed to keep suffering the antics of both well-intended and ill-intended fools. As I was reading I wondered how I could be so disheartened and yet at the same time be laughing out loud.”—Penny Le Couteur, author of Napoleon's Buttons: How 17 Molecules Changed History

"Thoroughly informative. Thoroughly entertaining. Thoroughly demoralizing. In a fun kind of way."—Robert Sapolsky New York Times bestselling author of Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

“Hilarious and breezily readable… his book is backed by mountains of research.” -Los Angeles Review of Books


“It's hard to imagine someone other than Phillips pulling off a 250+ page roast of mankind, but his perfect blend of brilliance and goofiness makes it a joy to read.”—Buzzfeed

“Cheeky and vulgar yet surprisingly erudite, the book is like Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens (2015) retold by a standup comedian a few drinks in.”—Booklist

“Lively, informative and superbly entertaining….Tom Phillips's history class is in session, so be sure to get a front-row seat.”—Shelf Awareness

From the Publisher

2019-02-17

It's an article of faith and certainty among many humanistic circles that the enterprise of our species has been one of continual progress, to which London-based humorist Phillips replies, bollocks.

It's been a mess ever since our protohominid arboreal ancestor, Lucy, fell out of a tree and died only to have her bones discovered in the 1970s and become a star of paleontology: "And yet," writes the author, "the only reason we know about her is because, bluntly, she fucked up." According to Phillips, humans are particularly good at this, and instances of error outweigh our better achievements. The author's approach is spirited and goofy, and though the fault-finding can seem excessive at times, you've got to enjoy a book that explores weird manias (including "outbreaks of panic that malign forces are stealing or shrinking men's penises") and misguided actions like introducing a potentially species-hopping virus to kill off the rabbits that humans introduced to Australia in the first place. Phillips can go obscure at the drop of a hat, as when he writes of the sultanship of Ahmed I of the Ottoman Empire and the brother-to-brother succession that followed his premature death: "It's fair to say that this did not go well." The author moves easily from subject to subject, and he does have a point: Some of our best-laid plans quickly go awry. A good example is the endless built-in struggle of democracy to balance tyrannies of the minority and keep from "sliding into autocracy," and it's undeniable, unless you benefit from denial, that we've made an incredible mess of the planet and are pretending things are OK "when instead we should probably be running around in a panic like our house was on fire, which…it sort of is."

Al Gore by way of Monty Python. Readers should be aware of the F-bomb throughout, but otherwise we should all be hanging our heads in shame, lifting them for a frequent chuckle.

Kirkus Reviews