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  • Published: 7 January 2013
  • ISBN: 9780141034645
  • Imprint: Penguin Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 1056
  • RRP: $24.99
Categories:

The Better Angels of Our Nature

The Decline of Violence In History And Its Causes




'Brilliant, mind-altering...Everyone should read this astonishing book' David Runciman, Guardian

Contrary to popular belief, humankind has become progressively less violent, over millenia and decades. Can violence really have declined? The images of conflict we see daily on our screens from around the world suggest this is an almost obscene claim to be making. Extraordinarily, however, Steven Pinker shows violence within and between societies - both murder and warfare - really has declined from prehistory to today. We are much less likely to die at someone else's hands than ever before. Even the horrific carnage of the last century, when compared to the dangers of pre-state societies, is part of this trend. Debunking both the idea of the 'noble savage' and an over-simplistic Hobbesian notion of a 'nasty, brutish and short' life, Steven Pinker argues that modernity and its cultural institutions are actually making us better people.

  • Published: 7 January 2013
  • ISBN: 9780141034645
  • Imprint: Penguin Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 1056
  • RRP: $24.99
Categories:

About the author

Steven Pinker

Steven Pinker is an experimental cognitive scientist. Currently Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard, he has also taught at Stanford and MIT. He has won many prizes for his research, teaching, and his eleven books, including The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, The Blank Slate, The Better Angels of Our Nature, and Enlightenment Now. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, a Humanist of the Year, a recipient of nine honorary doctorates, one of Foreign Policy's 'World's Top 100 Public Intellectuals' and Time's '100 Most Influential People in the World Today'.

http://stevenpinker.com

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