Steven Pinker

Is the world falling apart? Is progress obsolete? In this elegant assessment of the human condition in the third millennium, cognitive scientist and public intellectual Steven Pinker urges us to stop back from the gory headlines and prophecies of doom, which play to our psychological biases. Instead, follow the data: In seventy-five jaw-dropping graphs, Pinker shows that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the...

Faced with the ceaseless stream of news about war, crime, and terrorism, one could easily think we live in the most violent age ever seen. Yet as New York Times bestselling author Steven Pinker shows in this startling and engaging new work, just the opposite is true: violence has been diminishing for millennia and we may be living in the most peaceful time in our species' existence. For most of history, war, slavery, infanticide, child abuse, assassinations,...

This New York Times bestseller is an exciting and fearless investigation of language from the author of Rationality, The Better Angels of Our Nature and The Sense of Style and Enlightenment Now.
"Curious, inventive, fearless, naughty."
—The New York Times Book Review
Bestselling author Steven Pinker possesses that rare combination of scientific aptitude and verbal eloquence...

A former Google data scientist presents an insider's look at what the vast, instantly available amounts of information from the Internet can reveal about human civilization and society.

"From suicide bombings to mass shootings, the nightly news can make it seem like we live in the most violent of times. In barely a century, humanity has seen two world wars and the slaughter of millions by pitiless tyrants, not to mention civil wars, insurgencies, and terrorist attacks. But psychologist Steven Pinker argues that physical violence has been in decline for centuries, and we may be living in one of the most peaceful eras in human history....