Just reading this and it's really interesting. The author is a historian and takes a wide perspective on human history from our emergence as the dominant and sole surviving homo species to the modern age and draws heavily on science.
I'm only in a little way in but Im really enjoying it. So far he has argued that our initial successes as a species are due to our sharing of complex information, gossiping about each other and believing in things that don't exist (not just gods but pretty much everything our society is based on) Brilliant. Things I sort of knew or had heard befor but he puts them together in a very compelling way. A great story teller.