In the 21st century, humanity is reaching new heights of scientific understanding-and at the same time appears to be losing its mind. Indeed, if humans were fundamentally irrational, how did they discover the benchmarks for rationality against which humans fall short? The topic could not be more timely. A list of the ways in which we are stupid cannot explain how we're so smart: how we discovered the laws of nature, transformed the planet, and lengthened and enriched our lives. Hunter-gatherers-our ancestors and contemporaries-are not nervous rabbits but cerebral problem-solvers. But this, Pinker a cognitive scientist and rational optimist argues, cannot be the whole picture. Humans today are often portrayed as cavemen out of time, poised to react to a lion in the grass with a suite of biases, blind spots, fallacies, and illusions. "Can reading a book make you more rational? Can it explain why there seems to be so much irrationality in the world, including, let's be honest, in each of us? These are the goals of Steven Pinker's follow-up to Enlightenment Now (Bill Gates's "new favorite book of all time").
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