The Better Angels of Our Nature, (Paperback)

from setnahkt

Another excellent book from Steven Pinker. I love it when a book makes me say “Cool!” and “Wait, that can't be right” at frequent intervals and one that angers both liberals and conservatives. Pinker starts by describing the bloodiness of the historical past, with chapters on Homeric Greece, the ...

from puttocklibrary

This is a very dense book, but it is excellently written. It presents a theory that violence has declined from historical times through to the present, and presents a clear hypothesis for why this has happened. After reading this book, I am beyond grateful that I was born in the latter half of 20...

from eglinton

Society is not broken, and the world is less scarred by violence than at any time in history. It's not a jungle out there. In fact, we're all getting nicer and nicer, except perhaps in a few marginal places, far from Harvard. Yes, Dr Pangloss is in the house, as the amiable Steven Pinker offers s...

from rivkat

If you can stand evolutionary psychology, this is a very interesting book arguing that violence, while still a huge problem, has declined substantially across many categories of behaviors, from wars to intimate violence to animal cruelty. Pinker argues that literacy and rationality have contribut...

from JosephKing6602

A very engaging book that combined history/science/politics/economics/psychology as it impacts violence, and (counter-intuitively) the decline in violence... It was very broad in scope and massive in length...but well worth reading. Pinker reminds us that we can often gain insights by carefully a...