Reviewed on Apr 9, 2022

Must read 🏆

A book that changed my mind about history and made me an optimist! A well-documented account of how violence has been decreasing.

Famous psychologist Steven Pinker performs a detailed study of how war, religious persecution, torture, rape and other forms of violence have changed through history. The emerging picture is amazing: there has been a steady decline in all measures of violence since prehistoric times, leading the Long Peace. This is a period starting at the end of World War II of remarkable little war violence. Many readers would be skeptical about this. After all, we had the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and major conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. The current war of Russia against Ukraine happened long after the book was written and is considered by some as a break in the Long Peace. Still, the thesis of the book is supported by overwhelming evidence from the number of casualties in war and from other forms of violence.

Pinker ends his book with a great description of the neuroscience of anger and aggression. I am a neuroscientist myself, and I was impressed by the detail of the evidence provided, supported by many references to peer-reviewed papers.

This is a tremendously influential book. A must-read for anybody interested in history and politics. And one of the best books I have ever read.

Reviewed by

I am an avid reader in English and Spanish: Sci-Fi, fantasy, historical fiction and science. As a neuroscientist and UCLA professor, I reviewed many papers. I wrote five novels set in the Spain of the 70s, in its transition to democracy. I also write popular science about sex and the mind.