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Zusatztext The brilliant and considered contributions to Darker Angels add up to a devasting indictment from which the 'Pinker thesis' will never recover. Demonstrating the shallow scholarship that informs so many of Pinker's empirical judgments, this book also shatters his Panglossian ideology that "all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds." Informationen zum Autor Philip Dwyer is Emeritus Professor of History and founding Director of the Centre for the Study of Violence at the University of Newcastle, Australia. He has written extensively on the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras and on the history of violence. His latest book, with Barbara Mann, Nigel Penn, and Lyndall Ryan, is Empires of Violence: Massacre in a Revolutionary Age (2025). Mark Micale is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, USA. He is the author or editor of seven books, including Beyond the Unconscious; Discovering the History of Psychiatry ; Traumatic Pasts: History, Psychiatry, and Trauma in the Modern Age, 1870-1930 ; The Mind of Modernism: Medicine, Psychology, and the Cultural Arts in Europe and America, 1880-1940 ; and Hysterical Men: The Hidden History of Male Nervous Illness, and Traumatic Pasts in Asia: History, Psychiatry, and Trauma from the 1930s to the Present (forthcoming). Klappentext In The Better Angels of Our Nature Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker argued that modern history has witnessed a dramatic decline in human violence of every kind, and that in the present we are experiencing the most peaceful time in human history. But what do top historians think about Pinker's reading of the past? Does his argument stand up to historical analysis? In The Darker Angels of our Nature , seventeen scholars of international stature evaluate Pinker's arguments and find them lacking. Studying the history of violence from Japan and Russia to Native America, Medieval England and the Imperial Middle East, these scholars debunk the myth of non-violent modernity. Asserting that the real story of human violence is richer, more interesting and incomparably more complex than Pinker's sweeping, simplified narrative, this book tests, and bests, 'fake history' with expert knowledge. Vorwort An academic interrogation into the highly publicised Pinker argument that human violence is dramatically on the decline. Zusammenfassung In The Better Angels of Our Nature Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker argued that modern history has witnessed a dramatic decline in human violence of every kind, and that in the present we are experiencing the most peaceful time in human history. But what do top historians think about Pinker’s reading of the past? Does his argument stand up to historical analysis? In The Darker Angels of our Nature , seventeen scholars of international stature evaluate Pinker’s arguments and find them lacking. Studying the history of violence from Japan and Russia to Native America, Medieval England and the Imperial Middle East, these scholars debunk the myth of non-violent modernity. Asserting that the real story of human violence is richer, more interesting and incomparably more complex than Pinker’s sweeping, simplified narrative, this book tests, and bests, ‘fake history’ with expert knowledge. Inhaltsverzeichnis Preface List of Illustrations List of Contributors 1. Steven Pinker and the Nature of Violence in History Philip Dwyer and Mark Micale Part One: Interpretations 2. The Inner Demons of The Better Angels of Our Nature Dan Smail 3. The Use and Abuse of Statistics in Writing the History of Violence Dag Lindström 4. Progress and Its Contradictions: Human Rights, Inequality, and Violence Eric D. Weitz 5....
