Urgh, I detested "Atlas Shrugged." I didn't get that same sense from HD. ..in fact, saw some interesting parallels between what he suggested COULD take place and what I know to be true today thru my work experience (will not elaborate, sorry). Suffice it to say, while certainly not a life manual, I think teachings of this sort would be far more beneficial to today's youth than sending them to Sunday school and filling their heads with dogmatic compost. Yeah, I did sense the liberal bent. Being lazy...what does anthropocentricizing mean?

And, being only a couple of hundred pages into Sapiens, I already get the feeling that THIS is the seminal book, and H D is just a fanciful monetary follow up. Good book, but sort of a repeated chorus.

@LisaFultonave Sorry, but I only got through a dozen pages and then got suspicious. That's when I did some check (as mentioned) and when I saw the part on immigration it was a total turn-off. Curious about your ideas.

I read a local (Seattle Times) journalist and he talked about some local city council election coming up. At one time some of the council members were at odds with one another. Then came the business community especially Amazon and now the council members are together against the businesses and their PAC's. An emerging idea is called an "Opinion Cascade." This is where people pile into whatever emerging position they identify with in their own groups, if it wasn't your team, then you're against it. It's a form of tribalism and is making polarization worse. Witness the Republican party today. It can be a trap and in a community, Agnostic.com, that is supposed to foster critical thinking the opinion Cascade basically put us all in a box with other, like-minded members. Funny, this should come up now as there is a group here, Transitions Lopez, in which I was once on the steering committee. More and more the group got into this tribal mentality and I left. Now there is a 3 day event, Carbon free by 33, and I agreed to help set-up. A friend stopped by and he also wanted to help but they told him he wasn't needed. Their point is to go after the big oil companies and our position is for each of us to take steps to lesson our impact. He (and I) say a huge step would be to change our eating habits. I also want to talk about overpopulation and charities (I just received a link to a short film on this very subject). The members of the group don't want to hear either of these topics but only stick to the ones on their menu.

@LisaFultonave BTW, I did a little checking on the "Sapiens" book and found this" "The reception of the book has been mixed. Whereas the general public's reaction to the book has been positive, scholars with relevant subject matter expertise have been very critical of the book."
I have read several books on our evolutionary history (majored in European history in the university as am a history buff) and everyone has their particular slant. One thing I look for, deals not with tribes but circumstances and reasons for events.

I (accidentally) read Homo Deus first, and found some of the conclusions he draws to be amazingly accurate, particularly in the area of IT and AI. Alarming, but seriously accurate, with some of the extrapolated predictions downright concerning.

@LisaFultonave Sapiens is much better than HD.