With the endless news about wars, crime, and terrorism, it's easy to believe that we're living through the most terrifying period in human history.
But Steven Pinker shows in his astonishing and gripping book that the opposite is true: violence has been declining for millennia, and we may be living in the most peaceful time our species has ever known.
In the past, wars, slavery, infanticide, child abuse, murder, pogroms, mutilating punishments, bloody clashes, and genocide were commonplace. But in our own time, Pinker shows (using more than a hundred graphs and maps) that all of these forms of violence have significantly declined and are increasingly condemned by society everywhere. How did this happen?
In this groundbreaking work, Pinker probes the depths of human nature and, combining history and psychology, paints a startling picture of a world that is increasingly abandoning violence. The author helps us understand our complex motivations—the inner demons that drive us to violence and the good angels that point us in the opposite direction—and traces how changing conditions have enabled our good angels to prevail.
Debunking fatalistic myths that violence is an inherent part of human civilization and that the times we live in are cursed, this bold and compelling book is sure to spark heated debates in the offices of politicians and academics, as well as in the homes of ordinary readers, as it challenges and reshapes our views of society.