Sapiens works because Harari refuses to be a specialist. He zooms from biology to economics to cognitive science without ever losing the thread of a single driving question: how did we get here? If that kind of sprawling, accessible, occasionally uncomfortable intellectualism is what you're after, these seven books operate at the same altitude.
Start with Sapiens (the past), then Homo Deus (the future), then 21 Lessons for the 21st Century (the present). Each works as a standalone, but this order creates a coherent arc from where we came from to where we might be going.
Sapiens takes real liberties with historical and scientific consensus, which is part of why academics often critique it. The broad strokes are defensible; some specific claims are contested. It works best as a thought experiment and a synthesis rather than a textbook. Read The Dawn of Everything alongside it for pushback from two serious scholars.
Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything is probably the most accessible entry point. It covers science rather than history, but it's written with more warmth and humor than Harari, and it has the same effect of making you feel like you're seeing the world at a completely different scale.