Category Archives: Book Notes

Subtitled “The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress” (Viking, Feb. 2018, xix+556pp, including 102pp of notes, references, and index.) Posts about this book: Post 1; Post 2; Post 3; Post 4; Post 5; Post 6. The final chapter considers humanism as the … Continue reading →

Subtitled “The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress” (Viking, Feb. 2018, xix+556pp, including 102pp of notes, references, and index.) Posts about this book: Post 1; Post 2; Post 3; Post 4; Post 5. Expanded below. Part I of this book outlined the … Continue reading →

Subtitled “The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress” (Viking, Feb. 2018, xix+556pp, including 102pp of notes, references, and index.) Here are the remaining ten chapters in the long middle section of the book that focuses on Progress. Some of these … Continue reading →

Subtitled “The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress” (Viking, Feb. 2018, xix+556pp, including 102pp of notes, references, and index.) Here are the first seven of the 17 chapters in the long middle section of the book.  The first one … Continue reading →

Subtitled “The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress” (Viking, Feb. 2018, xix+556pp, including 102pp of notes, references, and index.) The first three chapters of this book are crisp summaries of themes shared with two or three dozen other books … Continue reading →

Subtitled “The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress” (Viking, Feb. 2018, xix+556pp, including 102pp of notes, references, and index.) This is the last of the ‘big’ Steven Pinker books that I’ve read but not yet written up here. Though … Continue reading →

Subtitled “Why Violence Has Declined” (Viking, Oct. 2011, xxvii + 802pp, including 106pp of notes, references, and index.)   Summary: Chapter 8 concerns five forces that drive violence: Predation, Dominance, Revenge, Sadism, and Ideology. Humans are not innately aggressive, except … Continue reading →

Subtitled “Why Violence Has Declined” (Viking, Oct. 2011, xxvii + 802pp, including 106pp of notes, references, and index.) Summaries: Chapter 6, “The New Peace,” consider three types of organized violence: among groups citing “ancient hatreds,” ethnic cleansing, and terrorism. These … Continue reading →