Lots of gory detail on violence of the past and a generally convincing thesis in good style... Yes, we are not as violent, not in the same way, as a society.

However I would have preferred of the book was shorter and more to the point. I walk away with lots of extra visions of medieval torture that I had managed to avoid to date. ( )

[Pre-reading comments. I ordered this one from the library because it's one of Bill Gates's recommendations for the year. I was dismayed when it came and I saw that it not only is 700 pages long (not 806 as listed here; there's a hundred pages of back matter), but has narrow margins, small type, and almost no white space on the pages. I bet it's the equivalent of a thousand pages of more conventional book design. Yikes! But as I flipped through it reading a paragraph here and there I kept thinking, "hm, that's interesting." Let's see how far I get in it.]

Aaand no. Sorry. I just kept picking up other books instead.

Overwhelming argument that human society has become less violent over time. Nice to read some good news for a change. But proving it involves hundreds of pages about how awful people are to each other - fortunately less awful now than in the past. ( )

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 millenia and we may be living in the most peaceful time in our species's existence. For most of history, war, slavery, infanticide, child abuse, assassinations, programs, gruesom punishments, deadly quarrels, and genocide were ordinary features of life. But today, Pinker shows (with the help of more than a hundred graphs and maps) all these forms of violence have dwindled and are widely condemned. How has this happened?

This groundbreaking book continues Pinker's exploration of the esesnce of human nature, mixing psychology and history to provide a remarkable picture of an increasingly nonviolent world. The key, he explains, is to understand our intrinsic motives--the inner demons that incline us toward violence and the better angels that steer us away--and how changing circumstances have allowed our better angels to prevail. Exploding fatalist myths about humankind's inherent violence and the curse of modernity, this ambitious and provocative book is sure to be hotly debated in living rooms and the Pentagon alike, and will challenge and change the way we think about our society. ( )

Excellent book. But somewhat long. At times it seemed like he wanted to bludgeon us with more and more data to prove his point. By the end I was finding it a little redundant and looking forward to the end.

But overall, a book I learned a lot from. ( )