The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined

by Steven Pinker

Men were responsible for about 92 percent of the killings (other than infanticide), and they were most likely to kill when they were in their twenties. Until the 1960s uptick, cities were generally safer than the countryside.

as David Hume observed, “The humour of blaming the present, and admiring the past, is strongly rooted in human nature, and has an influence even on persons endowed with the profoundest judgment and most extensive learning.”

Religion thrives on woolly allegory, emotional commitments to texts that no one reads, and other forms of benign hypocrisy.