Enlightenment Now
by Steven Pinker
Pinker's data-driven case that reason, science and humanism have produced enormous progress in life, health, wealth, safety, knowledge and happiness, and his defense of those values against pessimism. It is long, graph-heavy and polemical in its final section; the data chapters are a powerful antidote to doom.
Read it if…
you want the full evidence that the world has improved and why.
Skip it if…
you want a short read; see Factfulness.
Three things you will actually use
- Progress is real and measurable.
- Pessimism feels sophisticated and is usually wrong.
- Reason and institutions, not wishes, produced the gains.
Do this first
Read the chapters on health and wealth before forming an opinion on the state of the world.
Our verdict
Powerful data, polemical ending.
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