"Sapiens," is extraordinary on how well it summaries the human journey through time from the start. It never gets too technical but it's highly informative. It's 500+ pages yet it's hard to put down because it's so entertaining. I highly recommend it.
This is all true, but I sometimes missed the nuance of less witty but more detail-oriented histories. Harari could seem flippant at times, which mostly amused me when I agreed with him, but left me worried when I didn't. In a book this short on a period so vast, there was no space to steelman anything.