Steven Pinker
Cognitive scientist and author at Harvard.
The Internationalists: How a Radical Plan to Outlaw War Remade the World by Oona Hathaway & Scott Shapiro
To my list I would add The Internationalists, in which Oona Hathaway and Scott Shapiro argue that the oft-ridiculed 1928 Kellogg-Briand pact outlawing war deserves much of the credit for the decline of war after 1945, when the United Nations put it into practice.
on fivebooks.com · 17 Dec 2020 · Report
Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty by Roy Baumeister
Baumeister reviews the various psychological roots of evil, and what we know about them from social psychology, history and criminology. He argues convincingly that aggression does not come from a single motive in humans, but from a variety of motives, such as practical means-end reasoning, moralistic vengeance, dominance and utopian ideologies.
on fivebooks.com · 7 Oct 2011 · Report
Homicide by Martin Daly and Margo Wilson
It is one of two books that first excited me about evolutionary psychology. The other was Donald Symons's The Evolution of Human Sexuality. Homicide is a cornucopia of insights into human nature.
on fivebooks.com · 7 Oct 2011 · Report
Statistics of Deadly Quarrels by Lewis F Richardson
This gem is out of print and hard to find, but it is revered among scholars who study war and genocide quantitatively. Richardson was an applied physicist who treated war as a statistical phenomenon.
on fivebooks.com · 7 Oct 2011 · Report
The Evolution of Human Sexuality by Donald Symons
It is one of two books that first excited me about evolutionary psychology. The other was Donald Symons's The Evolution of Human Sexuality.
on fivebooks.com · 7 Oct 2011 · Report
The Remnants of War by John Mueller
Not only is Mueller unfailingly insightful as a political analyst, but he is a stylish writer with a sardonic wit. In several books he has argued that war between states, particularly war between developed states, is almost obsolete.
on fivebooks.com · 7 Oct 2011 · Report
Violent Land by David Courtwright
Courtwright takes on these puzzles in a rich narrative which weaves American history with evolutionary psychology and neurobiology.
on fivebooks.com · 7 Oct 2011 · Report
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