The better angels of our nature : a history of violence and humanity / Steven Pinker. (Text)

Reprint. Originally published: London: Allen Lane, 2011.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Foreign Country: -- Human prehistory -- Homeric Greece -- Hebrew bible -- Roman Empire and early Christendom -- Medieval knights -- Early modern Europe -- Honor in Europe and the early United States -- 20th century -- Pacification process: -- Logic of violence -- Violence in human ancestors -- Kinds of human societies -- Rates of violence in state and nonstate societies -- Civilization and its discontents -- Civilizing Process: -- European homicide decline -- Explaining the European homicide decline -- Violence and class -- Violence around the world -- Violence in these United States -- Decivilization in the 1960s -- Recivilization in the 1990s -- Humanitarian Revolution -- Superstitious killing: human sacrifice, witchcraft, and blood libel -- Superstitious killing: violence against blasphemers, heretics, and apostates -- Cruel and unusual punishments -- Capital punishment -- Slavery -- Despotism and political violence -- Major war -- Whence the humanitarian revolution? -- Rise of empathy and the regard for human life -- Republic of letters and enlightenment humanism -- Civilization and enlightenment -- Blood and soil -- Long Peace: -- Statistics and narratives -- Was the 20th century really the worst? -- Statistics Of Deadly Quarrels, Part 1: Timing of wars -- Statistics Of Deadly Quarrels, Part 2: Magnitude of wars -- Trajectory of great power war -- Trajectory of European war -- Hobbesian background and the ages of dynasties and religious -- Three currents in the age of sovereignty -- Counter-enlightenment ideologies and the age of nationalism -- Humanism and totalitarianism in the age of ideology -- Long Peace: Some numbers -- Long Peace: Attitudes and events -- Is the long peace a nuclear peace? -- Is the long peace a democratic peace? -- Is the long peace a liberal peace? -- Is the long peace a Kantian peace? -- New Peace: -- Trajectory of war in the rest of the world -- Trajectory of genocide -- Trajectory of terrorism -- Where angels fear to tread -- Rights Revolutions: -- Civil rights and the decline of lynching and racial pogroms -- Women's rights and the decline of rape and battering -- Children's rights and the decline of infanticide, spanking, child abuse, and bullying -- Gay rights, the decline of gay-bashing, and the decriminalization of homosexuality -- Animal rights and the decline of cruelty of animals -- Whence the rights revolutions? -- From history to psychology -- Inner Demons: -- Dark side -- Moralization gap and the myth of pure evil -- Organs of violence -- Predation -- Dominance -- Revenge -- Sadism -- Ideology -- Pure evil, inner demons, and the decline of violence -- Better Angles: -- Empathy -- Self-control -- Recent biological evolution? -- Morality and taboo -- Reason -- On Angel's Wings: -- Important but inconsistent -- Pacifist's dilemma -- Leviathan -- Gentle commerce -- Feminization -- Expanding circle -- Escalator of reason -- Reflections.