In this very readable translation from the original Hebrew publication of 2011, the author shows how multiple species of the human genus Homo have diversified and dwindled through more than 2 million years of prehistory.
If that sounds a long time, it's extremely recent compared with the age of the Earth, some 2000 times as ancient.
The single species remaining today we have named, with what may one day be viewed as frightening conceit, Homo sapiens (wise man).
It would be a gross understatement to say that the classification of human ancestral species is highly controversial, and some seek to distinguish us further as the subspecies Homo sapiens sapiens.
There's an element of subjectivity in defining a species, but wide agreement that Neanderthals, in particular, who survived until at least as recently as 30,000 years ago, were a species different from Homo sapiens.
Controversy surrounds whether the small-stature humans that survived until about 13,000 years ago on the Indonesian island of Flores were a separate species, Homo floresiensis, or even a different genus from Homo.
Some have argued they were small through adaptation to restricted resources, or perhaps pathologically. Hundreds of thousands of years separated the early identifiable steps in the development of Homo.
As the author guides us through the key waypoints throughout human history, it becomes clear how the rates of change have increased dramatically.
The ability to think and understand in the now-familiar way, the Cognitive Revolution, began to appear perhaps 100,000 years ago, yet agriculture dates back only around 10,000 years.
Humans have used fire for hundreds of thousands of years, but its exploitation in the Industrial Revolution, less than 300 years ago, transformed society as never before.
Since the advent of civilisation, measured in mere thousands of years, the advance in human knowledge has been explosive, especially in recent decades.
Coastal fishing has morphed into mechanised depletion of the oceans.
Computers dominate our lives from primary school.
Crops come off the genetic drawing board.
Pocket phones outnumber people, but were literally science fiction in early Star Trek.
That's where the author ultimately projects this interesting history, into the future.
We have become accustomed to thinking open-endedly about the prospects for changing crops, animals and even humans to suit our preferences.
Can inherited disadvantages be corrected by fiddling with our DNA, by constructing molecular patches to be carried by re-engineered viruses to tissues that need to be reprogrammed?
Can we encourage damaged nerves or organs to regenerate, or design bionic limbs controlled by the brain?
The author suggests Homo sapiens is beginning to master a redefined intelligent design, which used to refer to supernatural design.
If so, it's worth bearing in mind that babies born into our world of weapons of mass destruction arrive with self-centred instincts, and that knowledge, and notions of society, can never be imprinted into DNA.
• Clive Trotman is a Dunedin arbitrator and science presenter.
