Steven Pinker is a Canadian-American cognitive psychologist and linguist and a professor at Harvard University. He became known for works exploring the nature of language, the mind, and human behavior, such as The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, and The Better Angels of Our Nature. He is one of the most influential science communicators in the English-speaking world.
His reading recommendations reflect an eclectic and rigorous profile: cognitive science, analytic philosophy, history, evolutionary psychology, and Enlightenment rationalism. For anyone who wants to understand how the human mind works — and how knowledge can improve the world — Pinker's curation is a reliable compass.
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”This 21st-century statement of the ideals of the Enlightenment offers fresh insight on a vast number of topics, including the workings of human cognition, the ways of science, and the drivers of progress.”
”Children of the 1970s will appreciate the title, an allusion to Brand’s groundbreaking “Whole Earth Catalog,” which merged technology with the counterculture and encouraged global consciousness with the breathtaking earthrise photograph on the cover.”
”Perhaps the best display of expository scientific prose of the twentieth century.”
”It’s about a holocaust survivor who ends up with three wives. Every scene is a goldmine of insight about human nature.”
”A moving, hilarious, and intellectually deep novel about religion and atheism. Disclosure: I like this author’s fiction so much that I married her.”
”This chronicle of history’s hundred deadliest wars and massacres, including death tolls, is a good way to settle bets (who was worse, Genghis Khan or Hitler?), brush up your history, and marvel at the cruelty and stupidity of our species.”
”Fascinating, important new book by friend & former colleague”
”A grandmother from New Jersey uses genetics, ethnography, and child psychology to refute the dogma that parents shape their children's intelligence and personality.”
”The founding document of evolutionary psychology, filled with insights about sex and the sexes, and more relevant than ever with #metoo.”
