The Fragile Angel: English/French Edition

In a letter to a friend he sketched a character with his own thinning hair, sporting a bow tie, viewed as a boyish alter-ego, and he later gave a similar doodle to Elizabeth Reynal at his New York publisher's office. Usually the boy had a puzzled expression Most of the time he was alone, sometimes walking up a path. Sometimes there was a single flower on the planet. One "most striking" illustration depicted the pilot-narrator asleep beside his stranded plane prior to the prince's arrival. One major source was an intimate friend of his in New York City, Silvia Hamilton later, Reinhardt , to whom the author gave his working manuscript just prior to returning to Algiers to resume his work as a Free French Air Force pilot.

Seven unpublished drawings for the book were also displayed at the museum's exhibit, including fearsome looking baobab trees ready to destroy the prince's home asteroid, as well as a picture of the story's narrator, the forlorn pilot, sleeping next to his aircraft. That image was likely omitted to avoid giving the story a 'literalness' that would distract its readers, according to one of the Morgan Library's staff.

You can almost imagine him wandering without much food and water and conjuring up the character of the Little Prince. He would remain immensely proud of The Little Prince , and almost always kept a personal copy with him which he often read to others during the war. As part of a 32 ship military convoy he voyaged to North Africa where he rejoined his old squadron to fight with the Allies, resuming his work as a reconnaissance pilot despite the best efforts of his friends, colleagues and fellow airmen who could not prevent him from flying.

• SISTEMA PARA EVITAR QUE TU PENDRIVE SE LLENE DE VIRUS (Spanish Edition)?
• The Little Prince - Wikipedia.
• Sessions with Corinthians: Lessons for the Imperfect.
• JUMP START YOUR BUSINESS - EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW TO SUCCEED;

Many of the book's initial reviewers were flummoxed by the fable's multi-layered story line and its morals, [12] perhaps expecting a significantly more conventional story from one of France's leading writers. Its publisher had anticipated such reactions to a work that fell neither exclusively into a children's nor adult's literature classification. The New York Times wrote shortly before its release "What makes a good children's book? The Little Prince , which is a fascinating fable for grown-ups [is] of conjectural value for boys and girls of 6, 8 and Others were not shy in offering their praise.

In a way it's a sort of credo. Travers , author of the Mary Poppins series of children books, wrote in a Herald Tribune review: The Little Prince will shine upon children with a sidewise gleam. It will strike them in some place that is not the mind and glow there until the time comes for them to comprehend it. The book enjoyed modest initial success, residing on The New York Times Best Seller list for only two weeks, [58] as opposed to his earlier English translation, Wind, Sand and Stars which remained on the same list for nearly five months.

As of April , [76] The Little Prince became the world's most translated book into languages together with Italian novel The Adventures of Pinocchio , excluding religious works.

Katherine Woods — [77] produced the classic English translation of , which was later joined by several other English translations. Her original version contained some errors. Each translation approaches the essence of the original with an individual style and focus. Le Petit Prince is often used as a beginner's book for French-language students, and several bilingual and trilingual translations have been published.

As of , it has been translated into more than languages and dialects, including Sardinian , [85] the constructed international languages of Esperanto and Klingon , and the Congolese language Alur , as well as being printed in Braille for blind readers. It is also often used as an introduction into endangered varieties with very few speakers like Maya , Aromanian or Banat Bulgarian It is one of the few modern books to have been translated into Latin , as Regulus, vel Pueri soli sapiunt [86] [87] in by Auguste Haury — and as Regulus in by Alexander Winkler.

In , the book was also translated into Toba Qom , an indigenous language of northern Argentina , as So Shiyaxauolec Nta'a. It was the first book translated into that language since the New Testament. It was also translated to a northern Italian dialect, Vogherese. Anthropologist Florence Tola, commenting on the suitability of the work for Toban translation, said there is "nothing strange [when] the Little Prince speaks with a snake or a fox and travels among the stars, it fits perfectly into the Toba mythology".

Linguists have compared the many translations and even editions of the same translation for style, composition, titles, wordings and genealogy. Many of them are titled Prince From a Star , while others carry the book title that is a direct translation of The Little Prince. The book in its final form has also been republished in 70th anniversary editions by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in English and by Gallimard in French. Chile had its first translation in ; Peru in February ; Venezuela in , and Uruguay in The argentine writers Julia Bucci and Malena Gagliesi rewrote the story with gender neutrality and switched many characters to the female gender, including the protagonist.

The book is titled "La Principesa" "The little princess" , and it was published by Espejos Literarios in The Little Prince is one of the most popular and beloved foreign works of literature in China. It is reported that there are more than 70 Chinese translations of the novella. Died for France , which was applied by the French government in Additionally, the title character himself has been adapted in a number of promotional roles, including as a symbol of environmental protection , by the Toshiba Group.

The multi-layered fable, styled as a children's story with its philosophical elements of irony and paradox directed towards adults, allowed The Little Prince to be transferred into various other art forms and media, including:. The exhibition displayed the original manuscript, translated by the museum's art historian Ruth Kraemer, [] as well as a number of the story's watercolours drawn from the Morgan's permanent collection.

In January , the museum mounted a third, significantly larger, exhibition centered on the novella's creative origins and its history. The major showing of The Little Prince: A New York Story celebrated the story's 70th anniversary. It was if visitors were able to look over his shoulder as he worked, according to curator Christine Nelson. The new, more comprehensive exhibits included 35 watercolor paintings and 25 of the work's original handwritten manuscript pages, [] with his almost illegible handwriting penciled onto 'Fidelity' watermarked onion skin paper.

The autograph manuscript pages included struck-through content that was not published in the novella's first edition. As well, some 43 preparatory pencil drawings that evolved into the story's illustrations accompanied the manuscript, many of them dampened by moisture that rippled its onion skin media. He presented his working manuscript and its preliminary drawings in a "rumpled paper bag", placed onto her home's entryway table, offering, "I'd like to give you something splendid, but this is all I have".

One of the "story playgrounds" — a series of playgrounds themed after famous children's stories in Holon , Israel — is themed after The Little Prince. It features sculptures and play structures depicting scenes and characters from the book. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. This article is about the novella. For the animated film, see The Little Prince film. For other uses, see Little Prince. List of The Little Prince adaptations. Other sources, such as LePetitPrince. A Memoir , published in Taking off with an open book balanced on his leg, his ground crew would fear his mission would quickly end after contacting something "very hard".

On one flight, to the chagrin of colleagues awaiting his arrival, he circled the Tunis airport for an hour so that he could finish reading a novel. Their discussions, passed through Anne's meager French, were somewhat muted. However, the excited conversation between Antoine and Anne soon blossomed "like monster flowers", with each finishing the other's sentences. The meeting between the two future P war pilots was termed "less than a rousing success". Moreover, Charles later became unhappy about his wife's vast esteem for the French adventurer. He originally wrote the story with 43 sunsets, but posthumous editions often quote '44 sunsets', possibly in tribute.

He utilized all his contacts and powers of persuasion to overcome his age and physical handicap barriers, which would have completely barred an ordinary patriot from serving as a war pilot. He volunteered for almost every such proposed mission submitted to his squadron, and protested fiercely after being grounded following his second sortie which ended with a demolished P His connections in high places, plus a publishing agreement with Life Magazine , were instrumental in having the grounding order against him lifted.

In response, de Gaulle struck back at the author by implying that the author was a German supporter, and then had all his literary works banned in France's North African colonies. Retrieved 26 October Archived 2 May at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 6 January Johnston Press Digital Publishing. Retrieved 4 August Retrieved 26 October subscription.

Archived from the original on 7 June Retrieved 5 February Retrieved 5 May The Little Prince Tone , Shmoop. Retrieved 7 April Retrieved 6 April A Biography , New York: Linking Nuclear Science and Diplomacy". La Presse , 13 September Retrieved 16 October Retrieved 19 May Retrieved 25 March Saint-Exupery in New York". The New York Times. Retrieved 22 October Retrieved 24 January Retrieved 10 August Visions of a Little Prince. Archived from the original documentary research on 9 November Retrieved 30 October Le blog des amis de Gilbert Keith Chesterton. Retrieved 29 September Made in the U.

Archived 28 March at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 26 February C25 New York edition. La Presse , 27 January Retrieved 12 February Retrieved 4 May Archived from the original on 11 May Retrieved 3 May Retrieved 4 December Archived 11 August at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 3 September Retrieved 21 April Archived from the original on 25 January Archived from the original on 20 April Retrieved 14 April Retrieved 5 April It is only with the heart that one can see rightly.

Archived 18 February at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 21 July Retrieved 16 January Retrieved 16 September Retrieved 23 October Retrieved 22 April Archived from the original on 12 October Retrieved 15 April Archived from the original on 18 March Retrieved October 30, Archived from the original on Smith 12 February Retrieved 15 September Archived from the original on 10 January Archived from the original on 2 March Garden City Telegram , 28 September , p.

La Presse , 6 January ; derived from the Associated Press. Retrieved 29 January A New York Story: January 24 through April 27, , New York City: Retrieved 15 January Retrieved 26 January Korea Tourism Organization official site. Retrieved 13 December Retrieved 30 January Berlingske e-newspaper , 17 October Retrieved 5 September Retrieved 26 March Retrieved from Gale Document Number: Retrieved 20 August Archived from the original on 21 April Retrieved 9 November Retrieved 27 October Awards , Sofia, Bulgaria: Retrieved 29 May Retrieved 28 May Retrieved 23 December Beaumont, Peter 1 August I hope I am not the only one who thinks it is not necessarily a good thing to be reduced to lazy pricks watching game shows and stroking our penises Anybody with a modicum of a background in anthropology, history, sociology and economics should be laughimg themselves silly if it weren't so disturbing how much influence Pinker has Pinker proposes 5 ways that have reduced violence and can continue to do so: The final 3 I have no argument against.

But I have issues with the first 2. The state gets a monopoly on violence and capitalism is caricatured as gentle. But there have been moments when violence spiked and recently, so Pinker has to explain it. Pinker conveniently blames Marxism and leftism in general is caricatured the whole way through as the singularly destructive ideology of modern times without acknowledging the dangers of his own classical liberal ideology and throws in 'a few other individuals' to the mix as the responsibles for the genocides of the 20th century, and the increase in violence in s, 70s, and 80s.

Fascism is acknowledged only as the twin of dialectial Marxism. Classical liberalism gets the nod as the ideology that reduces violence of course Pinker would never admit that classical liberalism is even an ideology though. There is no comprehensive study of how fascism and communism came to be. It is really lazy stretch to say that fascism was just a few flukes of individual psychology, and not give credence to the idea that both fascism and communism came about from the specific conditions of a social system in crisis.

Neither is it mentioned that big business actually financed and promoted fascism in Italy and Germany. That would complicate things too much. So, nothing about communism coming into being as a reaction to capitalism Nothing either about theory, philosophy, economics, anthropology, activism owing anything at all to Marx's ideas. Marx isn't even worth the time of day to Pinker, except as an explanation for violence. This should raise the question, really can any intellectual who tries to analyze the history of modern times be taken seriously if they haven't taken the left seriously?

So leftism gets all the blame for the bad stuff, but the increased rights that accompanied the 20th century are not attributed at all to leftist ideas or practice. They are accounted for as simply natural by-products of classical liberalism ie. The Expanding Circle of Empathy, the Escalation of Reason and the Feminization of society have nothing at all to do with leftist ideals. Class struggles never happened.

Activists weren't leftists, they were classical liberals.

These rights eventually became 'common sense'. If there any battles they were set forth by non-violent classical liberals, and always as peacefully as possible. There are plenty of examples of serious breaches of truth here. In fact, you would be hard-pressed to find any successful activist who doesn't find certain elements of Marxism insightful. But none of that is mentioned here because Pinker is not at an activist, he is status quo, out of touch with reality, pure and simple. It is also fairly embarrassing for Pinker to not acknowledge how far from anything even remotely leftist or Marxist several so-called communist and their undoubtely genocidal regimes were.

Something akin to blaming Jesus for the Crusades. And indeed ideological twins of fascism, but not at all in the sense that Pinker argues. But if he tried to go there, his simplistic view of everthing would implode. Most people who rave against communism base their assumptions on secondary sources.

It is clear that Pinker hasn't understood Marx or even remotely leftist politics. As a fairly well-read leftist, it is obvious to me that there hasn't been a communist state to this day, as much as the leaders of those states have claimed to be. Neither is it mentioned how many different interpretaions of communism there are. He lumps the left all together. But if Pinker were to do so honestly, it would be quite a stretch to suggest that leftism is not about equality, freedom and the destruction of totalitarianism, oppression and alienation.

In fact, you would think leftism was fascism the way Pinker describes it. Pinker comes across as a reactionary anti-communist suffering from the Red Scare, still inhabiting the frigid mental landscape of the Cold War. But hey, when you are an authority in Harvard, sweeping caricatures and generalizations are allowed. According to Pinker, dialectics are simply mysticism and a justification for violent struggle. Class struggle is of course also blown off as mystical dialectical hogwash. Well, that is some feat blowing off dialectics, considering how many of the greatest philosophical works in world in the last 2 centuries have had to deal with the idea of dialectics because of its intellectual force , but the eminent Steven Pinker waves it off with his magic wand and without anything at all to back it up.

He also blows off 'intellectuals' in general because 'they are attracted to extreme ideas'. But he wholly contradicts himself when he proposes the superior intellectual value of classical liberalism. Which of course isn't extreme, it is just the obvious rational choice that doesn't even need to be intellectually defended. How arrogant can you get? It's also fairly wacky when he argues that 'intelligent people overwhelmingly tend to be liberals'.

Based on IQ test scores and surveys of people with high scores he concludes that the smartest people are liberals and the other lesser ones are leftists and conservatives. But what about the smartest of the smart the intellectuals being attracted to extremes? This should leave you wondering if these arguments are for real? I am not familiar enough with the statistics that Pinker inundates us with to know if 'violence' has actually dropped or not consistently, progressively and continuously throughout history. But our propaganda alarm bells should sound when anyone makes a statement like that.

According to Pinker, it is obvious that primitive tribes were the most violent humans ever. I have read some fairly convincing arguments otherwise, but I think it is likely the differences in opinion are going to come in the very definition of violence. The definition of violence by Pinker is dictionary strict, and very limited. Humans sometimes have to fight to survive. Pinker doesn't substantiate any difference in self defense and aggression, justice is mocked, freedom is not even covered. But when class struggle is just vain ideology to him, what can you expect?

Neither does he take on the prison industrial complex, although he does acknowledge the importance of caging up of the maximum amount of people that are considered most likely to fight back and apparently thinks it a necessary evil if there are 'a few too many' as deterrence. Apathy or depression is not even mentioned. But of course if you look it up in a dictionary, violence isn't any of those things.

Since only , have been killed in Iraq a disputed low-flying number and there were at least 1,5 million in Vietnam, apparently US foreign policy is getting way more compassionate. Of course nothing is even mentioned of thinly-covered up US intervention all over the world like in Latin America. An ignorance easily corrected by leafing through books like 'Killing Hope' by William Blum on the ongoing American holocaust. A book Chomsky says is 'far and away the best book on the subject'. But the book has leftist leanings, and is therefore intellectually irrelevant to a religiously loyal status quoer.

Democracy is hailed as a reducer of violence, and justifiably so. However he also has an extremely limited idea of democracy. There is a crisis of democracy right now because of a lack of participation the Manufacturing of Consent and Public Opinion and fast-growing awareness of it. What about acknowledging the advent of a type of coercion that creates ignorance, apathy and depression?

This is not considered as an element of violence of course. It would even appear to be a positive thing, if it can reduce those violence stats and keep us wanking. Even if certain types of coercion cannot be defined as violence, why not acknowledge it for what it is? As said, Pinker targets ideology as a main cause of violence.

When ideologies clash it often creates even more violence. Currently the ideology of capitalism is being questioned by a large variety of people because of its weaknesses. If and when that increases there may just be an increase in violence again, and not only from the Leviathan state that Pinker raves so much about. Of course Pinker would blame the new ideology if that happened, instead of the old one and all its weaknesses that brought it to the conflict.

This is ironic because he does spend some time criticizing conservative ideology for its inability to adapt to progressive change. I argue that Pinker betrays exactly that attribute despite his humanist claims. Liberals and conservatives are the only two electable parties because neither is so different from the other and neither is at all threatening to the current status quo. But for Pinker to have his moral authority he should also be arguing that if capitalism doesn't work well enough or starts to create bigger problems than it solves ie. But then again we might just sit around watching game shows and stroking our penises.

If Pinker is right, that would be ideal. Perhaps this can be avoided if the old ideology adapts peaceably. But neither should anyone who analyzes history or anthropology honestly assume that the current ideology is forever. Perhaps so, but denying or misunderstanding certain causes of violence gross inequality and oppression which lead to new ideologies will not help the matter.

The so-called mystical class struggle and violence around the time of Karl Marx and the following century were actually consequences of the inability of capitalism to adapt to its structural weaknesses. If there were enough reforms the violence caused may not have been necessary, or rather it could have convinced the masses it wasn't necessary to challenge the system. However, the inflexibility and fundamentalism of classical liberalism would seem to have actually CAUSED the majority of violent conflicts.

Navigation menu

One doesn't have to be a Marxist to see that the capitalist system did not adapt appropriately or peacefully to the class awareness or if you prefer inequality awareness that was developing. Pinker calls 'class awareness' ideology though. But this has been progressively taken apart since around The fear of class war retribution has diminished. With the recent austerity measures only being the latest in a series of measures to increase the wealth of the rich at the expense of the middle class and poor. But that doesn't mean that a self-defense type of violence will not develop in the near future if the current system doesn't adapt appropriately rising homelesseness or unemployment could escalate things.

The fact that violence actually went down during the 30s Great Depresssion is almost gleefully mentioned by Pinker though. So there really isn't a guarantee that violence will increase. In fact, it would seem that the elite powers are getting impetus from implementing their austerity measures because of Pinkeresuqe ideas of how non-violent we have become. Anyhow, if Pinker is right and the world is better off being wankers than trouble-makers, then our intellectuals should be the best wankers.

And so for that reason a wanker cannot read trouble-making literature, or leftist perspectives, one cannot at least acknowledge their intellectual validity and consider them. Pinker doesn't acknowledge these debates because he is pushing his own ideology, or rather absurdly and falsely pushing the idea of the 'end of ideology' which is actually a thinly-veiled support for the current neoliberal utopian ideal. One that is as unsustainable and unrealistic as any utopia or ideology. The book was long and tiresome in many parts, but also very rewarding in the sense that it is an incredibly revealing look at how corrupt and anti-intellectual academics can be.

In Pinker's mind, it would seem he has earned the right to step right out of his specialty of psychology and linguistics and make sweeping generalizations in anthropology, history, sociology and economics. View all 41 comments.

Google Translate

His thesis is that violence of every kind, from international warfare down to murder and corporal punishment, has been on a steady decline throughout human history, up to and including the present day — and not only does he make this case in considerable detail, but he goes on to give a very wide-ranging discussion of possible political and psychological causes for what's happened.

This book is big, and it needs to be: Historical, statistical, sociological, neurobiological, and anecdotal — and I'm slightly confused by some of the negative reviews here, because although you might not like all of his conclusions, it's not easy to argue with the facts when they're laid out in this much detail.

Wondering if village life in the 30s can really have been as bad as dodging rapists in today's inner cities? Well, prepare for approximately 8, graphs and charts proving you wrong in every direction. Leafing through them is at first daunting, then fascinating, then astonishing, and eventually wearying. But they keep coming! The decline in some forms of violence is so dramatic that the figures have had to be plotted on a logarithmic scale, so vertiginous is their descent.

Hitting kids — gone from normal to unacceptable in barely a generation. Dropping like a knackered lift. Paedophiles and child abduction? Okay then, what about WAR. And even they are becoming less frequent and less individually deadly. Don't get me wrong, this is not a happy-clappy book about mindless optimism, and he is assiduous in stressing that the situation could easily change. The point is not that we have entered an Age of Aquarius in which every last earthling has been pacified forever.

It is that substantial reductions in violence have taken place, and it is important to understand them. Pinker takes a good, long look at several possibilities, and to my mind at least identifies three major factors behind the decline. The first is the growth of democracy, which strongly correlates with lower rates of violence across the board, and we get the figures to prove it. The second is the revolution in communications, firstly during the Enlightenment, and then more recently with the birth of the mass media age.

Again, huge numbers of studies are adduced to make the point. He is talking about the West here, but even elsewhere the trend is unmistakeable. Would the world be more peaceful if women were in charge? The question is just as interesting if the tense and mood are changed. Has the world become more peaceful because more women are in charge?

And will the world become more peaceful when women are even more in charge? The answer to all three, I think, is a qualified yes. When he's finished considering social movements and political changes, he pokes inside your brain. We have pages and pages of various neuro-sociological experiments where people were strapped to an MRI machine and told to slap a puffin in the face, or something, so that various lobes and cortexes could be identified and examined.

The question is whether there are anatomical, or evolutionary-psychological, causes for violence, and if so how easily they can be overcome. We get a lot of impressive-looking diagrams like this I may have remembered some of the details wrong: Pinker is very interesting on the Flynn Effect , which, if you're not aware of it, is the upward trend in general intelligence observed around the world in standardised testing since such things began. Many people that have written on this subject are skeptical that folk nowadays can really be smarter than anatomically-identical humans of a few generations ago, despite what the tests say — but Pinker, after a careful examination of how thought processes are influenced by changing social norms, is not afraid to draw his conclusions, at least in the ethical sphere: The other half of the sanity check is to ask whether our recent ancestors can really be considered morally retarded.

The answer, I am prepared to argue, is yes. Though they were surely decent people with perfectly functioning brains, the collective moral sophistication of the culture in which they lived was as primitive by modern standards as their mineral spas and patent medicines are by the medical standards of today. Many of their beliefs can be considered not just monstrous but, in a very real sense, stupid.

Obviously we are into speculative territory here, but I actually found it very heartening and thought-provoking to see someone prepared to follow the evidence that far. The age distribution of a population changes slowly, as each demographic pig makes its way through the population python. Recall the mathematical law that a variable will fall into a power-law distribution… Recall from chapter 3 that the number of political units in Europe shrank… Recall that there were two counter-Enlightenments… Recall that the statistics of deadly quarrels show no signature of war-weariness.

Recall that the chance that two people in a room of fifty-seven will share a birthday is ninety-nine out of a hundred. England and the United States, recall, had prepared the ground for their democracies… Recall that for half a millennium the wealthy countries of Europe were constantly at each other's throats. Cronin, recall, showed that terrorist organizations drop like flies over time… And recall the global Gallup survey that showed… Recall that narcissism can trigger violence… Recall that the insula lights up when people feel they have been shortchanged… Patients with orbital damage, recall, are impulsive… Recall from chapter 3 the theory of crime… Just how much stuff are you expecting me to remember, Pinker?!

And surely someone who wrote three books on language has a fucking thesaurus handy? There are a couple of minor errors, too, that an editor should have caught. However, and despite my sometimes flippant tone in this review, the truth is that I thought this was a magnificent book — convincingly argued and truly multidisciplinary, so that I felt like I was getting a synthesis of the important studies carried out in half a dozen different fields. It's a big, serious argument that deserves proper consideration, and one that'll give you some ammo to argue back next time you're feeling cynical about the relentless news headlines.

I think it's a clear 4. View all 55 comments. It is so wide-ranging that it is fortunate it has such a memorable title - the reader might have easily lost track of where it is all supposed to be heading. Individually, any single section of the book is a throughly entertaining masterpiece, but as a whole, in terms of coherence, and on how the thesis and the direction of the arguments hold together, the book is not as much of a delight.

But it is an ambitious book and is in some respects a new sort of history - almost a moral history of the world and Pinker deserves praise for the attempt. The next such historian to come along has been given much to work with. Pinker is very convincing about the fact that violence has indeed declined; he is even persuasive on why it was but bound to happen.

But when it comes to explaining the phenomenon which he spends most of the book convincing us is real based on his strength psychology and evolutionary biology , he comes up slightly short. This is not to say that the arguments are weak. Pinker does a remarkable job in his survey of history, of stats and of a multitude of ideas. The scholarship is immaculate, the intentions are noble and the conclusions are plausible but I would still wager that Pinker would fail to convince the majority of his readers.

Because he ignores the contingent nature of history and he forgets that the 'better angels' has not only made us a more moral society but has also made us a more skeptical society. I was disappointed that Pinker does not explore the preventive powers of sheer skepticism. And that is a powerful deterrent to most forms of drastic action, since now it is harder to justify them. This to me is the real cause for optimism of the measured and skeptical sort, as is our wont now.

View all 29 comments. This seems like a stunning misstep by the normally brilliant Steven Pinker. His ability to write with extraordinary force and clarity has been demonstrated repeatedly in two separate areas of expertise -- linguistics and cognitive science. Unfortunately, the brilliance of his earlier books in those areas is nowhere in evidence in this regrettable dog's breakfast of a book. I found it almost unreadable - poorly argued, undisciplined, self-indulgent, and - despite its grotesquely bloated length 8 This seems like a stunning misstep by the normally brilliant Steven Pinker.

I found it almost unreadable - poorly argued, undisciplined, self-indulgent, and - despite its grotesquely bloated length pages - support for its main thesis is woefully inadequate, dependent on a highly selective interpretation of existing data and completely unconvincing. Pinker can sling the statistical jargon Poisson processes, power laws, the gambler's fallacy, the Gini coefficient like a pro, but all the jargon in the world cannot make up for his recurrent habit of over- or mis-interpreting data whose limitations he consistently glosses over. The jacket cover breathlessly promises "more than a hundred graphs and maps".

Any graph is open to misinterpretation. Three of the most common ways of doing so are i selective interpretation ignoring or explaining away the data that don't fit one's preconceived ideas ii inappropriate extrapolation beyond the range of available data and iii failure to acknowledge the data's limitations, such as likely sources of bias, or extreme sparsity of information.

Pinker commits each of these errors, with such numbing frequency that one loses all respect. We are seriously asked to draw conclusions from a graph of the "rate of battle deaths in state-based armed conflicts between and " Figure while being instructed to ignore the figures for the first and second world wars. After all, "the world has seen nothing close to that level since". This kind of rubbish insults the intelligence. Or you could look at Figure Lest you be distracted by the actual data, Pinker has helpfully superimposed some very impressive looking solid lines documenting his cheerful belief in the rise of vegetarianism.

These are much darker than the actual data points, presumably in the hope that the reader might be distracted from noting their complete lack of fit to the data. Worried about racially motivated killing of black people? Here are the yearly data number of such killings from to Not to mention being a little premature. But nothing as inconvenient as facts, or their absence, can stand in the way of a man who has already decided he knows the answer.

The threat of nuclear holocaust? Exaggerated, because - as any fool can see - nuclear weapons have never been used in wartime since Hiroshima and Nagasaki. One imagines this argument must be of great comfort to those who survived those particular "anomalies". Just as Pinker's breezy insistence that the only meaningful way to interpret the number of people killed in a given conflict is relative to the world's population at the time is surely meaningless to anyone who has lost a family member in battle.

It's at best breathtakingly insensitive; some would find it deeply offensive. To anyone who respects the scientific method, this is a horrifyingly bad book, one which completely obliterates Pinker's credibility. Don't waste your time. View all 12 comments. When an academic steps outside his or her field of expertise, it's best to brace yourself for a torrent of nonsense. Steven Pinker, whose work in linguistics and psychology I greatly enjoy, has made a habit of using that work as a springboard to foist his pet political theories on the public.

Whereas his previous attempt in The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature was a vehicle for his ideological ramblings, it was at least not based on a gaping statistical flaw and had some value in r When an academic steps outside his or her field of expertise, it's best to brace yourself for a torrent of nonsense.

The Modern Denial of Human Nature was a vehicle for his ideological ramblings, it was at least not based on a gaping statistical flaw and had some value in refuting common misconceptions, even if it did so in a fundamentally dishonest way. Whatever redeeming qualities to be found in Better Angels are far outweighed by the failure of Pinker's thesis. Has violence actually declined? If not, the rest is window dressing. Pinker quickly notes that the reader will be skeptical of his thesis off the bat -- we are inclined to believe the world is getting more violent due to our constant exposure to it in the media, which is biased toward reporting bad news, criminality, etc.

No doubt he is correct in this. It is well known that crime rates in the United States have been in decline for the past years yet many continue to believe that crime is on the rise. This likely comes from a bit of selective reporting mixed with confirmation bias; the proverbial man searching for his keys under the streetlight. The main reason I was immediately skeptical about this thesis was that I had seen it before!

The general thrust of Pinker's argument appears in a brief section in The Blank Slate and a TED talk he adapted that into a few years back. Here he totally mangles basic anthropology and archaeology. The chart he presents is a misinterpretation of data from Lawrence Keeley's War Before Civilization -- anyone familiar with the societies he presents knows that most of them are not nomadic hunter-gatherer bands but partly or fully sedentary and horticulturalist, e. As an aside, I find the use of Keeley ironic as he argues against a biological view of warfare in the book while Pinker is an ardent supporter of this view.

An adapted excerpt can be found here: Using modern hunter-gatherer societies or at least what Pinker thinks are hunter-gatherer societies as stand-ins for pre-historic societies is a rookie mistake. The degree to which modern hunter-gatherers have been displaced and influenced by industrial societies and nation-states has been one of the big debates over the last half-century in anthropology.

Thus, whether they are representative of some "state of nature" at all is highly questionable. See this brief summary of the "hunter-gatherer revisionist debate" by Thomas N. Headland for an overview and references: Pinker notes this at one point but then completely forgets about it in taking his own cooked numbers at face value. Even if we accept Pinker's definition of violence, the whole undertaking itself is an exercise in guesswork and absurdity.

There were no census programs or bureaus of statistics throughout much of history. Written records of war often inflate or deflate the body count depending on whose side you're reading from and as we know, winners write the history books and the archaeological record is spotty in a large number of places. Perhaps we can get fairly accurate body counts here and there, but there are large swaths of history that we essentially have to just guess at. Fortunately, the good folks at Quodlibeta, actual historians, have broken down a good deal of the historical and statistical flaws in the book starting here: Considering he has been "refining" this argument since The Blank Slate read: His FAQ released to "respond" to criticism completely dodges the fact that he's pulled a good deal of his numbers straight from his nether region.

See Quodlibeta again for an appropriately snarky take-down: At some point, it begins to stretch credulity that he doesn't realize there's a hole big enough to drive an eighteen-wheeler through in this argument. This does, however, make the book a useful litmus test to see which critics will gush how "thoroughly researched, amply documented, and strongly argued" something is as long as you flash a few fancy charts 'n graphs and pseudo-intellectual smoke and mirrors their way.

Unfortunately, it seems that the answer is "A whole lot of them. As above, the rest is just window dressing, a game of make believe. Sure, there's some interesting parts about, say, the psychology of aggression and a few delicious nuggets and tidbits of trivia along the way. Digging through the rough for them seems a rather pointless exercise, though, especially where it's already been done better.

Large chunks of his argument are recycled from other authors such as Peter Singer and Lynn Hunt. The end result is a whiggish history where sense and nonsense blend together seamlessly, thus negating any use the layperson might find in it. The presentation of history too often crosses into the cartoonish, being loaded down with ad hoc theorizing deployed to save the book's overarching narrative.

Pinker's goal is, at base, to push his ideology, his own brand of secular humanism he claims to be based in "Enlightenment values. This is why Pinker is forced to downplay or omit the excesses of the Enlightenment such as the French Revolution with its Jacobins and Cult of Reason. The irony here is that Pinker reveals himself to be as much of a romantic as his ideological opponents. The doomsayers appeal to a mythical past to buttress their claims Arthur Herman has written an amusing account of this phenomenon in The Idea of Decline in Western History , but the optimists of modernity similarly appeal to a mythical future.

While the notion that the kids these days are just rotten and the world is going to hell in a hand-basket has been with us for millennia, one of the central narratives of modernity has been a belief in a steady incline. With an increasingly global economy and the inevitable advance of science and technology, the high priests of modernity preach time and again, we are surely on our way to the best of all worlds.

Predicting the future direction of humanity, though, has proven to be a fool's game, a bit of off-track betting for the intellectual class. While Pinker never commits to this teleological narrative wholesale, he does bang the drum for the steady march of progress quite a bit throughout the book. Obviously, while I don't pine for the days of King Cotton or colonial Africa, I don't find much comfort in the fact that while the number of debt and sex slaves has exploded in absolute numbers, their proportion of the total population has decreased.

What Bjorn Lomborg did for environmental issues, Pinker has done for the history of violence. View all 8 comments. In this book, Steven Pinker explores a very controversial thesis, that is, violence is declining. Different types of violence are declining on multiple time scales. It would seem like the twentieth century had some major wars and plenty of genocide to make his thesis sound rather foolish.

But in the first seven chapters he shows lots and lots of statistics to back up his thesis. In the eighth and ninth chapters he also explores the scientific reasons for violence and the reasons for increasingly In this book, Steven Pinker explores a very controversial thesis, that is, violence is declining. In the eighth and ninth chapters he also explores the scientific reasons for violence and the reasons for increasingly non-violent behavior.

The book is very comprehensive--it is quite long and detailed. The first chapters are not particularly "heavy" reading, but towards the end of the book, it can be tough-going--but fascinating throughout. Pinker tackles the main objection to his thesis--the three worst dictators of the twentieth century Hitler, Stalin, Mao were responsible for an immense amount of violence, deaths and misery. Some of the reviewers here at Goodreads have remarked that Pinker underestimates the number of deaths that are attributable to Mao. Perhaps he did grossly underestimate the numbers--I really don't know.

Pinker makes an interesting point about the recent theory, raised in the book Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything , that crime in the United States declined in the past few decades, because of the legalization of abortion in The idea is that the reduction in unwanted children led to fewer violence-inclined youths. Pinker argues that after , the proportion of children born to vulnerable women actually increased, rather than decreased.

One of the reasons for the decline in violence is the increase in literacy and reading. Pinker argues that the transmission of new ideas in books has acted as a liberal force in society. He shows that during the Middle Ages, most people were religious and believed in the literal truth of the bible. Heretics were everywhere, and were persecuted in wars, massacres, pogroms, executions and torture.

Nowadays, while religious people "believe" in the bible, most do not take such a literal interpretation. They don't think that it is moral to invade a city and kill--or take as slaves--every single person. A higher value is placed on human life, because of the "shift from valuing souls to valuing lives.

Later, he writes, The world has far too much morality. Pinker shows how game theory plays a big role in the evolution of morality. In fact, he defines morality as the opportunity for positive-sum games. In so much of history, people played in zero-sum or even in negative-sum games. For example, war is usually a negative-sum game, in the sense that so many people die and suffer, that the gains to the victor are completely overwhelmed by the losses to both sides. Nowadays, the language of violence is often cloaked in "bureaucratese", in words like purges, deportations, bombardments, pacification, rectification, ethnic cleansing, collateral damage, and rendition.

These euphemisms help to self-exculpate the perpetrators of violence, and make violence seem to be justified or involuntary. Pinker discusses in some detail the factors that he believes have led to decreased violence in recent times. He talks a lot about the concept of Leviathan from the book by this name by Thomas Hobbes.

According to Pinker, the presence of a legitimate, strong central government helps to reduce violence, at least on a personal basis. People are less inclined to violence when they think that punishment is likely. Not always true, but usually. He describes how "gentle commerce" helps to "turn zero-sum warfare into positive-sum mutual profit The root of the problem is that there are so many sacred concepts on both sides.

A sacred concept is one that is not subject to negotiation--it is completely off the table. People will not compromise on their sacred values, but they might compromise on so-called "pseudo-sacred" values. Pinker describes evidence that both sides might be willing to declare compromises through symbolic concessions, even though they are not actually willing to perform on their compromises.

Pinker writes, To find anything that softens the opposition of Israeli and Palestinian fanatics to what the rest of the world recognizes as the only viable solution to their conflict is something close to a miracle. It all has to do with the symbolic framing of a peace agreement. There are certain parts of the book that might make a squeamish reader cringe--there are some short descriptions of barbaric tortures. If you can get through or skip those parts, then you will find a fascinating theory developed from the point of view of scientific scholarship--sociology, psychology, and evolutionary biology.

As with all of Steven Pinker's writings, this book is fascinating, comprehensive, and sure to be controversial. He has most of the facts behind him, and it is difficult to argue against his major points. View all 11 comments. I love optimistic books, and there is a lot of optimism in the almost pages of "The better angels of our nature". At the same time, I find it impossible to give a single opinion about this behemoth of a book, because I found some of its elements truly excellent, some ok, and some absolutely scream-out-loud dreadful.

This is one of the best books I've ever read in terms of clarity of exposition and effectiveness of the writing. Also I love optimistic books, and there is a lot of optimism in the almost pages of "The better angels of our nature". Also, at the very beginning the author outlines the structure of the book, which gives you a clear mental map of what you're getting into.

As a plus, Pinker peppers his prose with anecdotes, jokes and references to pop culture a bit like Malcolm Gladwell that enliven the experience. I know some may not enjoy that. Pinker acknowledges the fact that we are missing a lot of crucial data about deaths and violence in the past , and he's received a lot of criticism for presenting a thesis that's partially based on guesswork, but I think there is a lot of value in making the layman like me think about these topics, and at least in trying to find some general patterns.

Some reviewers hated his methodology, or the way he handles some piece of data - all fair. I think it all makes for a healthy discussion. China, India, Africa, South America He explains that European history has the most available data, but I'm not the only one to think that he could have made a much better effort in this regard. Sadly, this lowers the level of the book in many parts to pure tripe, in particular when it comes to the very subjective reasons behind the apparent decrease in violence throughout history. On page Pinker spells out exactly what the main problem with his own book is: Human beings are led by their passions, say many psychologists, and deploy their puny powers of reason only to rationalize their gut feelings after the fact ".

Ironically, that is precisely what he ended up doing with this book. To be clear, this has nothing to do with Pinker's titular argument in favor the decline of violence, which as I said I found fairly convincing and rational. No, Pinker's emotional, irrational underlying argument is the following: THAT is where the author's heart is. That gave me a sudden bout of nausea Watching Pinker zig-zag his way through his own version of world history where religion has caused only mayhem and suffering is like watching a professional skier slalom down through the obstacles.

You have to admire his incredible ability to make it through without tripping over every few seconds. In their place is an ethics that is inspired by empathy and reason and stated in the language of rights. The Rights Revolutions are liberal revolutions ". Under this light, it becomes hard to reconcile and explain how Martin Luther King, a protagonist in the "Rights Revolutions", was a Baptist preacher who dedicated his life to worship, prayer and to following Jesus Christ as a role model.

Slalomist Pinker turns his skis swiftly and manages to dismiss MLK's adherence to Christianity almost completely! What a feat, ladies and gentlemen!! But he also read renegade theologians such as Walter Rauschenbusch, who criticized the historical accuracy of the Bible and the dogma that Jesus died for people's sins. King then embarked on a serious study of the social and ethical theories of the great philosophers, from Plato and Aristotle down to After this microscopic cherry-picking, later on, on page comes the master stroke.

See how Pinker references his ridiculously insufficient excursus through MLK's cultural influences: Wait, we "saw" what??? The only thing you said was that he read some books, that is all we "saw". We never "saw" that MLK "rejected mainstream Christian theology"! Oh, what a number he just pulled there. Of course, an anti-christian MLK would fit perfectly in Pinker's nice little box. If only it wasn't a complete fabrication! Maybe, if we stretch it a bit, King was a "liberal Christian", but still very deeply and fully embracing Christian theology.

For King, his Christian faith was far more than a source of soaring rethoric. It was the boundless reservoir of the colossal courage he would need to risk his life day after day. So it is with unbelievably misguided violence pun intended that Pinker strips our history of any trace whatsoever of the positive influence of religion and religious people on the world, while focusing only on the stereotypical negative stories of course, confusing "religion" with "corrupted clergy".

As I said above, what Pinker really means with Religion is Christianity, because it's the only one he keeps referring to, and he doesn't seem to know much at all about Hinduism or Buddhism. But the first claim is mistaken and the second irrelevant ". Aside from the fact that he is clearly wrong, what is even the point of this argument? What value does a defense of atheism bring to this book? Pinker then constructs a couple of sentences aimed at resolving and clarifying why he has chosen to completely ignore religion in the pages of "The better angels of our nature": So, let me get it straight: There is no fundamental golden rule, no consolidated drive for empathy and compassion, no focus on respect for human life across the main religions?

The declaration of Human Rights has been inspired exclusively by Enlightenment humanism, and not at all by Christian values? You are actually using the horrors committed by a small part of the clergy to invalidate all the positive messages of religion and, more importantly, the useful and positive initiatives that most religious institutions pursue throughout the world and very rarely make it to the news - like these www.

After these statements, it's not surprising that the author forgets to articulate how "secular ideas" possess this ideal quality of being "a single force in the history of something" that religions do not have. As if everyone who was ever inspired by secular ideas behaved in the same way and went exactly in the same direction - the BEST direction, of course. Here Pinker goes on to perform some more professional skiing to get around other obstacles, like the excesses of the French Revolution, Cult of Reason etc. I thought people who kill, or in general use violence, do it in the name of anything at all: More in general, I wonder: Why did he need to defend secular ideologies as if they'd never been the inspiration for violence or violent acts?

And why did he pinpoint all these cultural movements as a cause "in themselves" for violence and war? None of these ideas was ever a specific order to commit atrocities. I've always thought that, in reality, bad or deranged people are the ones who read those words and bend them to their basic, animal desires.

But again, Pinker is a human being himself, and each human being needs to worship something - we are powered by emotions, not by reason. As much as he tries to tackle this immense subject with pure rationality, his personal opinions come through loud and clear and crash to a pulp any of his efforts to sound objective and fully rational. So, in the end, to go back to the main official thesis of this book: We can talk forever about the type of statistics used by Pinker in this book, but it seems he could be right, and I hope he is.

As for the reasons behind the decrease, as discussed, Pinker gets irrational about it, for understandable reasons his wife. Here is his own explanation from his website: She explained to me how morality can be grounded in rationality, and how secular humanism is just a modern term for the world view that grew out of the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment in particular, she argues, from the ideas of Spinoza.

A crucial passage here is "To the extent that the decline of violence has been driven by ideas". No one knows how much this is! But Pinker certainly thinks the history of ideas has been much more impactful on reality than what it actually has been. This is a common misjudgement of academics: If violence has decreased, I see no evidence that the decrease has been directly and mainly caused by the advent of the Enlightenment ideas, as Pinker is trying to convince us with this book.

Those ideas were certainly a big piece of the puzzle, a great inspiration, just like many other ideas have been a positive inspiration. But fundamentally, I think what needs to be credited most of all is: On his view of scientism: On his New Atheist credo: On his mis understanding of religion: View all 15 comments. P opens with some good, old-fashioned, crappy anthropology. P loves broad statements about very diverse people. Some live rough lives and some are gentle and egalitarian.

His methods for tallying war deaths are shoddy and insane, and all the non-state societies he looks at are are on the edge of states, dealing firsthand with imperial violence.

He's constantly flirting with eugenicist narrations -- the Yanomami and the Maori are just genetically more violent, while white europeans maybe are genetically gentler. I mean, if you ignore the mass-murdering part. Proof that the lower classes were vicious comes from the fact that terms for poor people were synonymous with viciousness. Epithets are proof of that minority is bad, not proof of some messed-up discrimination.

Racism is a thing of the past, says P, before he says a bunch of racist shit. This despite the fact that the poor and brown actually tend to come up against the state far more frequently than others. They bear the bruises from the state on their bodies. They are put behind bars at insane rates, they are physically deported, they are forced by the state to jump through hoops to get basic goods like sufficient food, healthcare, and housing. The wealthy, with their off-shore tax havens, are far more stateless than the poor. No, no way did he say this.

But as P shows, racism is only natural. Babies are racist, after all Evolutionary psychology folks like P are quick to jump into gender-essentializing, and redescribe sexist shit as being biologically mandated. Reading this book helped explain why P hurried to the defense of Harvard pres. The book is full of men-are-from-mars-etc. Ergo, such differences are natural, and men are the ones who have to exercise self-control to live in the civilized world. Women, on the other hand, these natural gatekeepers, are just inherently sexually inhibited.

He will never concede that this might have something to do with social power, rather than reproduction, and so has nothing to say about the raping of little boys or prepubescent girls. Apparently, men would all love to be raped. P pooh-poohs the feminist responses to rape which point out how power is at play, and not simply lust This "preposterous" claim is just a Marxist penchant to explain all phenomenon as a struggle for power between groups. And with an extra boost of smarm, he corrects us: No really, there was a Study. Progress Comes from People like Steve Pinker: Why did people begin to believe in human kindness?

And of course the ones thinking were the privileged, white, male thinkers. Our distaste for slavery is owed to William Wilburforce, not Harriet Tubman. P is, incidentally, one of these people, using his thoughts to move us all toward progress. This is also where P shows his anti-Marxist Hegelian stripes: Adjusting all violence to per-capita: But the bigger question for me is how this prioritizes mass populations. If there is a small tribe wiped out through genocide, that is still just as horrible as it would be if there were fewer people.

The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined

Wiping out a village in a dirty war is still wiping out a village, even though New York exists. What it comes down to is that P could show how the Aztec empire had a low death-through-violence rate, and a neighboring tribe had a high rate, and say See states are more peaceful. When what actually happened is the State massacred the tribe.

Making meaning and meaninglessness: P can't edit his arguments down -- he's writing pages, after all, everything in! I mean, come on, you're not even moving these to a footnote? But P will find his argument anywhere. I had heard of Lewis Fry Richardson before as a kind of tragically comic figure, who tried to figure out the mathematics of war and got nowhere.

But P finds this positively instructive: Some decade had to be the bloodiest, after all! But all the other violence? Take away Hitler and viola, peace and understanding Hitler is credited with possessing magical powers to make people behave badly. This can of course be a comforting thought -- you no longer have to hold everyone else to any responsibility so what if the churches and the social clubs all happily participated? This also fits with his outdated Great Man theory of history. He basically tells us to look at all that faux-meat at the supermarket. How could he feasibly have written these paragraphs without worry that he was cooking the data?

How could his editors and readers have feasibly let him get away with this? Love affair with enlightenment and capitalism He finally gets to his real argument, which is that capitalism is peace. The democratic part can be skipped completely if we can get to corporate governance in a faster war. Anything that gets in the way of the free functioning of markets is sure to cause violence. Sure, Hitler hated Marx, but we have some proof that he read a book by him, and basically the holocaust is just a tweaked class war.

This is when his ire toward Vietnam comes out. And of course capitalism is in no way to blame for wars of plunder and colonization. He proves this by showing that countries rich in oil are among the most violent he ignores the obvious fact that other countries might be trying to plunder their oil. Of course, P would like to find psychological research supporting his idea that people engaging in commerce are less violent. Intellectuals, he concludes, feel too superior to businessmen to actually study the idea.

To state the facts, however, and then to bury them in a mass of other information is to say to the reader with a certain infectious calm: View all 18 comments. I have a peripheral awareness that Pinker awakens red penitus in a goodly proportion of his stalwart readers: The subject centre stage here is violence, mainly in the westen hemisphere, where data is more readily available and the overarching conclusion is that it has decreased over time: No one, as far as I am aware, has disagreed with this overall premise, although certain definitions of violence are under debate: This type of thinking will either resonate or repel.

And he does so by positing the issue of excessive violence in terms of biological necessity, but resolves its decrease through ambiguous channels such as self control, empathy, reverse morality and, incongruously, and ultimately, the Flynn effect. How can something which starts off as nature be dampened by nurture?

On the surface, all of the theories Pinker posits withstands microscopic examination: The upper and middle classes modified their behaviour. The lower classes persisted and persist , because they have never fully bought into the state-citizen contract and to be fair, neither has the state, on their behalf. Other influencing factors intervene: And you know what: All of these trends decreased violence.

If the average teenager today could go back in time and take an I. Nor is it easy to attribute this rise to improved education, because the aspects of the tests on which scores have risen most do not require a good vocabulary or even mathematical ability, but instead test powers of abstract reasoning.

Pinker argues that enhanced powers of reasoning give us the ability to detach ourselves from our immediate experience and from our personal or parochial perspective, and frame our ideas in more abstract, universal terms. This in turn leads to better moral commitments, including avoiding violence. It is just this kind of reasoning ability that has improved during the 20th century.

First of all, surely the Flynn effect is fallacious? This must be intuitively wrong, even to a philosophical novice. How can Reason deal with a biological impulse? Obviously countless other examples pertain. And yet violence has gone down. How to explain this, then? First, Pinker concedes the impulse to violence is biologically driven.