Gangs, suicide bombers, paedophiles, Somali pirates: the world is swarming with people who want to hurt us. And yet Steven Pinker, a Harvard psychologist, thinks we’ve never been safer. In
The Better Angels of Our Nature, he argues that violence has actually declined from prehistory to
today, due to a combination of progressive thinking and neurological evolution.
What are the critics saying?
Most reviews have been ecstatic.
The Economist called it ‘magisterial’, the New York Times thought it ‘supremely important’, while David Runciman told Guardian readers it was a ‘brilliant, mind-altering book’.
In his Financial Times review, Clive Cookson said although it was too long, and potentially too gruesome for some readers, it was a ‘marvellous synthesis of science, history and storytelling.’
Reviewing the book for the Independent, Marek Kohn described it as ‘a great liberal landmark’, adding ‘its 700 pages of exposition almost turn themselves.’
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