Humans cover art

Humans

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

 Preview
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free
Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.
Prime members: New to Audible? Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Just £0.99/mo for your first 3 months of Audible.
1 bestseller or new release per month—yours to keep.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts, and Originals.
Auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

Humans

By: Tom Phillips
Narrated by: Nish Kumar
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly. Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £12.99

Buy Now for £12.99

LIMITED TIME OFFER | £0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Premium Plus auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Terms apply.

About this listen

 'This book is brilliant. Utterly, utterly brilliant' Jeremy Clarkson

'F*cking brilliant' Sarah Knight

READ FOR YOU BY CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED COMIC AND HUMAN NISH KUMAR, THIS IS AN EXHILARATING JOURNEY THROUGH THE MOST CREATIVE AND CATASTROPHIC F*CK-UPS OF HUMAN HISTORY.

In the seventy thousand years that modern human beings have walked this earth, we've come a long way. Art, science, culture, trade - on the evolutionary food chain, we're real winners. But, frankly, it's not exactly been plain sailing, and sometimes - just occasionally - we've managed to really, truly, quite unbelievably f*ck things up.

From Chairman Mao's Four Pests Campaign, to the American Dustbowl; from the Austrian army attacking itself one drunken night, to the world's leading superpower electing a reality TV mogul as President... it's pretty safe to say that, as a species, we haven't exactly grown wiser with age.

So, next time you think you've really f*cked up, this book will remind you: it could be so much worse...


FURTHER PRAISE FOR HUMANS:

'Very funny' Mark Watson

'A light-touch history of moments when humans have got it spectacularly wrong... Both readable and entertaining' The Telegraph

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

'A timely, irreverent gallop through thousands of years of human stupidity' Nicholas Griffin, Ping-Pong Diplomacy: The Secret History Behind the Game That Changed the World

(P)2018 Headline Publishing Group Ltd©2018 Tom Phillips Anthropology Social Sciences Funny Witty Thought-Provoking Imperialism Latin American Africa

Listeners also enjoyed...

 Assholes cover art
52 Times Britain Was a Bellend cover art
You Don't Want to Know cover art
A Less Boring History of the World cover art
Polymath, Volume 1 cover art
Genius cover art
Only the Beautiful cover art
A History of the World cover art
Surrender, White People! cover art
All Things Reconsidered cover art
222 QI Answers to Your Quite Ingenious Questions cover art
Sunburn cover art
Abolish the Monarchy cover art
Stay Gold cover art
Everything Is F*cked cover art
The Fun Knowledge Encyclopedia cover art
All stars
Most relevant
optimism bias, my favourite bias, makes me think that I and all mankind will learn. we won't.

oh dear

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Extremely entertaining and depressing in equal measure. Do you enjoy history, quirky stories, and social sciences? Well, this could be the book for you. As one would expect from a former Buzzfeed writer, ‘Humans’ has is written in a very informal, conversational style. Tom Phillips packs his book with well researched eclectic examples from human history of our desire to make disastrous mistakes. He presents these in no particular order, and turns the oft-used narrative upside down. By touching upon only the critical elements needed to construct the mental final picture of each historical event, he enriches the text by adding lots of examples to send a compelling message in each chapter. Nish Kumar narrated, which helped to convey the grim sarcastic humour. Whether we learn from these errors or not is a different matter entirely and as this book illustrates, it's not always as easy or black and white as it seems.

Loads of facts and history but very funny too

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
loved this book. Nish was perfect as the reader. definitely recommend this audio book to all.

Great book and brilliantly read

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
best narrator ever! the irony and sarcasm was present without exaggeration and the tone was always on point!

fverry good and surprisingly funny!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Well, how many ways can you think of, on how to F*** it up? This book covers some of the big ones. A warning to those who have just the right answer to that nagging problem. No good deed goes unpunished and all that, although those punished may not have anything to do with anything.

Sumed up in a word Hubris

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews