The Better Angels of Our Nature
  • Published: 3 October 2011
  • ISBN: 9780141959740
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
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The Better Angels of Our Nature

The Decline of Violence In History And Its Causes

Formats & editions
Paperback
7 Jan 2013
EBook
3 Oct 2011
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This radical reassessment of human progress will become the most famous book Steven Pinker has written - everyone needs to read it

-Shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize 2012

This riveting, myth-destroying book reveals how, 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. He ranges over everything from art to religion, international trade to individual table manners, and shows how life has changed across the centuries and around the world - not simply through the huge benefits of organized government, but also because of the extraordinary power of progressive ideas. Why has this come about? And what does it tell us about ourselves? It takes one of the world's greatest psychologists to have the ambition and the breadth of understanding to appreciate and explain this story, to show us our very natures.
  • Published: 3 October 2011
  • ISBN: 9780141959740
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
Categories:
Share…

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

portrait photo of Steven Pinker

Also by Steven Pinker

Rationality
Enlightenment Now
The Sense of Style
Learnability and Cognition, new edition
The Seven Words You Can't Say on Television
The Stuff of Thought
The Blank Slate
See all

Praise for The Better Angels of Our Nature

One of the most important books I've read - not just this year, but ever ... For me, what's most important about The Better Angels of Our Nature are its insights into how to help achieve positive outcomes. How can we encourage a less violent, more just society, particularly for the poor? Steven Pinker shows us ways we can make those positive trajectories a little more likely. That's a contribution, not just to historical scholarship, but to the world

Bill Gates

Brilliant, mind-altering...Everyone should read this astonishing book

David Runciman, Guardian

A supremely important book. To have command of so much research, spread across so many different fields, is a masterly achievement. Pinker convincingly demonstrates that there has been a dramatic decline in violence, and he is persuasive about the causes of that decline

Peter Singer, New York Times

[A] sweeping new review of the history of human violence...[Pinker has] the kind of academic superbrain that can translate otherwise impenetrable statistics into a meaningful narrative of human behaviour...impeccable scholarship

Tony Allen-Mills, Sunday Times

Written in Pinker's distinctively entertaining and clear personal style...a marvellous synthesis of science, history and storytelling

Clive Cookson, Financial Times

A salutary reality-check...Better Angels is itself a great liberal landmark

Marek Kohn, Independent

Pinker's scholarhsip is astounding...flawless...masterful

Joanna Bourke, The Times

Selected by the New York Times as one of the 100 Notable Books of 2011

New York Times