Recommendations you can check.
by Steven Pinker, 2011
Who uses, recommends or left The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, in their own words: each a verbatim quote with a link to where it was said.
3 people
This was really really good, as in, maybe the best book I’ve read that year.
Gwern's compiled star-rated reviews of books he has read since ~1997 (page last modified 2022-10-13).
2022-10-13·gwern.net ↗
My top book of 2017 was The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, by Steven Pinker. It's the story of how and why the world has gotten safer and more peaceful, from tribal societies to today.
Year-end 'Twelve books from 2017' post ranking the books he read that year
2017-12-31·blog.rootsofprogress.org ↗
General/other The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined
His list of especially good nonfiction audiobooks, chosen for content and narration.
2024-06-15·blog.andymasley.com ↗
Every entry is a verbatim quote and a link to the public post it came from. Nothing is paraphrased. If it is not on record somewhere public, it is not here.
The verdict is what they actually said: loved and liked are explicit; recommended means they told others to get it; uses means they only say they use it; read is a book on their public shelf with no verdict; mixed and disliked are kept too.
A dashed affiliate link, sponsored or their own label means the post disclosed a relationship. It is shown, never hidden.
The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is for its kind of thing.
The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is, for its kind of thing. Fully green is recent. It drains a quarter at a time as the post gets older, and is empty once it reads as dated.
What counts as old depends on the thing. A laptop praised four years ago has been replaced twice; a book loved twenty years ago is probably still loved. The shading is gone after about:
Stripes mean the post carries no date and the date shown is an estimate. No date at all, no shading.