Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress

Steven Pinker

Feb 2018 · Penguin Random House Audio · Narrated by Arthur Morey

About this audiobook

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2018
ONE OF THE ECONOMIST'S BOOKS OF THE YEAR

"My new favorite book of all time." --Bill Gates

If you think the world is coming to an end, think again: people are living longer, healthier, freer, and happier lives, and while our problems are formidable, the solutions lie in the Enlightenment ideal of using reason and science. By the author of the new book, Rationality.

Is the world really falling apart? Is the ideal of progress obsolete? In this elegant assessment of the human condition in the third millennium, cognitive scientist and public intellectual Steven Pinker urges us to step 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 rise, not just in the West, but worldwide. This progress is not the result of some cosmic force. It is a gift of the Enlightenment: the conviction that reason and science can enhance human flourishing.

Far from being a naïve hope, the Enlightenment, we now know, has worked. But more than ever, it needs a vigorous defense. The Enlightenment project swims against currents of human nature--tribalism, authoritarianism, demonization, magical thinking--which demagogues are all too willing to exploit. Many commentators, committed to political, religious, or romantic ideologies, fight a rearguard action against it. The result is a corrosive fatalism and a willingness to wreck the precious institutions of liberal democracy and global cooperation.

With intellectual depth and literary flair, Enlightenment Now makes the case for reason, science, and humanism: the ideals we need to confront our problems and continue our progress.

Ratings and reviews

Forget it. He weaves beautiful prose and insight into humanity along with Hillary Clinton being the better embodiment of the things he believes in. Yes. Read that twice. He cadtigates Donald Trump and pushes a political agenda about as any liberal can daydream. Its beautifully written, and when he's not aching over Hillary not winning he has insight. I left this book thinking, "how can someone this smart be this stupid". Subtracting his liberal dilusion from the book would've earned it 5 stars. Save your hard earned money. listen to the preview first. What a wasted opportunity.

This book is a happy, funny, thought provoking, rational and unpretentious journey. I loved this book and recommend it to everyone. I have read and recommended many of Steven Pinker's works, but 'Enlightenment Now' is his masterwork. While Pinker's writing has always been technically superb, his somewhat annoyingly precise style has relented in this book.

The book itself is quite good, but the chapters are not divided correctly into tracks. For example, chapter one of the book doesn't start until the chapter six track.

About the author

Steven Pinker is the Harvard College Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. A two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist and the winner of many awards for his research, teaching, and books, he has been named one of Time's 100 Most Influential People in the World Today and Foreign Policy's 100 Global Thinkers.