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Steven Pinker's riveting, myth-destroying new book reveals how,contrary to popular belief, humankind has become progressively lessviolent, over millenia and decades.
Given the images of conflict we see daily on our screens, canviolence really have declined? And wasn't the twentiethcentury the most devastatingly brutal in history? Extraordinarily,however, as Steven Pinker shows, violence within and between societies - both murder and warfare - really has declined fromprehistory to today. We are much less likely to die at someoneelse's hands than ever before.

Steven Pinker's riveting, myth-destroying new book reveals how,
contrary to popular belief, humankind has become progressively less
violent, over millenia and decades.
Given the images of conflict we see daily on our screens, can
violence really have declined?  And wasn't the twentieth
century the most devastatingly brutal in history? Extraordinarily,
however, as 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.
Debunking both the  idea of the 'noble savage' and a
Hobbesian notion of a 'nasty, brutish and short' life, Steven
Pinker argues that modernity and its cultural institutions are
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 appreciate and explain this story, and to show us
our very natures.

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The Better Angels of Our Nature(ISBN=9781846140945)

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