Harvard psychology professor Pinker (The Sense of Style) defends progressive ideals against contemporary critics, pundits, cantankerous philosophers, and populist politicians to demonstrate how far humanity has come since the Enlightenment. These ideals, as well as progress, science, reason, and humanism, are explored through the lenses of evolutionary biology, physics, sociology, anthropology, and, of course, history. Pinker explores the fallacies that critics of progressive ideals employ and presents graphs and statistics to demonstrate that issues such as income inequality, terrorism, and racial intolerance are not at the crisis levels the hysterical media commonly suggests. He astutely captures the deceptive techniques of the naysayers whose opinions alter those of the wider public, describing "the social critic's standard formula for sowing panic: Here's an anecdote, therefore it's a trend, therefore it's a crisis." In the book's final section, Pinker explores how political discourse exploits cognitive biases, exacerbating polarization and partisanship, and how humanism is a preferable ideology to its main rivals, theism and nationalism. In an era of increasingly "dystopian rhetoric," Pinker's sober, lucid, and meticulously researched vision of human progress is heartening and important. Agent: David Brockman, Brockman Inc. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Prolific writer, psychologist, and public-intellectual Pinker (The Better Angels of Our Nature, 2011) is a highly regarded, albeit sometimes controversial, observer of humanity. In his latest tome, which weighs in at more than 500 densely packed pages, he takes on the idea of progress, elegantly arguing that in various ways humanity has every reason to be optimistic over life in the twenty-first century. Reaching back and forth in time with ease (he name checks the Hebrew Bible and Chris Rock within 2 pages while writing of sustenance), Pinker tackles a wide range of topics as he presents substantial evidence (including his trademark graphs) to argue that life is far better for people now than it has ever been. Some of these comparisons fall a bit flat obviously, traffic safety was less assured in the era before crosswalks and traffic lights and his seemingly casual dismissal of ethics concerns surrounding the Tuskegee experiment is troubling to say the least, but Pinker certainly crafts a defense of progress that will provoke deep thinking and thoughtful discourse among his many fans.--Mondor, Colleen Copyright 2018 Booklist

THE RECOVERING: Intoxication and Its Aftermath, by Leslie Jamison. (Back Bay/Little, Brown, $18.99.) Jamison, adding to a large group of addiction memoirs, maps her own recovery while considering the relationship between creativity and substance abuse. The emotional firepower of the book comes in its second half, after she has embraced sobriety; our critic, Dwight Garner, called this section "close to magnificent, and genuinely moving." LOVE AND RUIN, by Paula McLain. (Ballantine, $17.) McLain's latest novel, about the marriage between the journalist Martha Gellhorn and Ernest Hemingway, takes up the question that vexed (and probably doomed) their relationship: Why must a woman choose between her career and what her husband wants her to be? McLain drew on primary sources to develop her fiery protagonist. A WORLD WITHOUT 'WHOM': The Essential Guide to Language in the BuzzFeed Age, by Emmy J. Favilla. (Bloomsbury, $18.) The BuzzFeed copy chief discusses her plan to codify language in a digital era, balancing a need for logic with flexibility to account for how people actually talk. Along with a look at the rules she devised, the book offers a guide to the quandaries we face as the way we communicate online reshapes language itself. MADNESS IS BETTER THAN DEFEAT, by Ned Beauman. (Vintage, $17.) Emboldened by "fungal clairvoyance" after inhaling mold in an old temple, a C.I.A. agent tells the story of a fateful meeting in the Honduran jungle in 1938. The novel's twists and turns touch on everything from colonialism to conspiracy theories. Our reviewer, Helene Stapinski, called the story "a kitchen-sink sendup of spy novels, 1930s Hollywood and screwball newspaper comedies, with a pinch of Pynchon thrown in for fun." ENLIGHTENMENT NOW: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress, by Steven Pinker. (Penguin, $18.) Pinker sets out to persuade pessimists - people disturbed by today's threats like climate change and the rise of authoritarian populism across the globe - of one thing: that life has never been better, both in the West and in developing countries. The Harvard psychologist marshals an impressive array of data to back up his claim. ETERNAL LIFE, by Dara Horn. (Norton, $15.95.) When readers meet Rachel, she's a suburban great-grandmother in the 21st century. But that life is only the latest in a string of reincarnations, the consequences of a promise she made in Roman-occupied Jerusalem some 2,000 years earlier. Horn's elegant novel explores how Rachel's immortality impedes her ability to be fully, truly alive.

In this fascinating yet frustrating work, Pinker (The Stuff of Thought) argues that as bleak as they may seem, modern times are not as dark as they appear. The values and techniques that arose from the Enlightenment have guided humanity into a better world at an uneven pace, which can be verified through statistical analysis guided by those same values. The material produced is a wide-ranging and deeply interesting examination of many aspects of culture over time, from agriculture to gun ownership. This exploration is a bit marred by the reliance on long lists and digital charts; though they are included as PDFs, listeners not sitting at a computer may struggle to follow along. The breadth of the material covered is commendable, but small errors, omissions, and a tendency to dip into the irrational techniques the author decries are noticeable to a listener in the know, and that tends to undercut the author's credibility, e.g., the author failed to address the Deepwater Horizon tragedy while discussing oil spills. Emphasizing the potential problems of a successful white male academic explaining why the world isn't so bad, the author has the poor taste to include extensive quotes from Louie C.K. and Woody Allen without commentary on their actions. He also fails to speak to the problems of underreported statistics such as sexual abuse and harassment. Both the author and narrator Arthur Morey frequently come across as talking down to the listener, which can make for an unpleasant experience. VERDICT Flawed yet interesting, this book has a powerful message degraded by the telling. Recommended for fans of Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens.-Tristan Boyd, Austin, TX © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

The bomb? The plague? Trump? Not to worry; things are getting better. So writes eternal optimist Pinker (Psychology/Harvard Univ.; The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, 2011, etc.)."Why should I live?" So asked one of the author's students. "Explaining the meaning of life is not the usual job description of a professor of cognitive science," he writesbefore gamely proceeding to answer that very question from a variety of stances, all resting on the assumption that life is best endowed with meaning if only we remember our Enlightenment ideals. Those ideals, "products of human reason," hinge onwell, reason, and science, the latter the "refining of reason to understand the world." Against these are what Pinker characterizes as manifestations of delusional thinking, including religious faith and the "hermeneutic parsing of sacred texts," the "suffocating political correctness" on campus, the "disaster of postmodernism" that has devastated humanistic thought, and the "identity-protective cognition" that has made political discourse so soul-killing. Pinker's protestations are progressive, though the academically orthodox will find him an apostate. Just so, his atheism may put him in company with Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris, but he would doubtless say that it's the only logical conclusion to come to, and Pascal's wager be damned. In a long, overstuffed, impeccably written text full of interesting tidbits from neuroscience and other disciplines, the author examines the many ways in which Enlightenment ideals have given us lives that our forebears would envy even if gloominess and pessimism are the order of the dayon which he sensibly remarks, "a modicum of anxiety may be the price we pay for the uncertainty of freedom." There's work to be done, of course, from educating the illiterate and innumerate to taking the world's nuclear arsenal down to, ideally, zero, and much else besides.For those inclined to believe that the end is not nigh and who would like to keep up with recent science, this book is awell, not a godsend, but a gift all the same. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

A renowned scientist and popularizer of science, Pinker (psychology, Harvard) makes a moral, political, and philosophic case for the values and practices of the Enlightenment. He sees enemies on both the Right and the Left; they include traditional religion, populist tribalism, and Nietzschean postmodernism. Pinker begins with the good news. Graph after graph shows that humans are living longer, healthier, and happier lives and that violence and loneliness are down. The optimistic 18th-century philosophes have been vindicated, the fears of the Romantic pessimists falsified. True, the planet faces serious threats like global warming and nuclear arms, but pragmatic solutions are available. Pinker concludes with a philosophical defense of science, which he contends is entirely in harmony with humanistic values. The future is bright, if religion, tribalism, and "second culture" pessimism can be kept at bay. As a polemic the book is effective, and its unashamed, old-fashioned scientism is refreshing and probably currently useful. But perhaps the picture is a little too perfect. Historians may cavil at Pinker's traditional account of the Enlightenment; philosophers may think his scorn for alternatives overdone. But Pinker's lively prose and persuasive use of examples give his argument considerable impact. Summing Up: Recommended. All readers. --Fred E. Baumann, Kenyon College