I found the topic fascinating, but the book was so long that I often considered putting it down. I already believed the premise (that violence is declining), so I skimmed a lot of that. But it still took me ages to read this.
Author Stephen Pinker delves deeply into many factors that may have played a role in violence's decline, including giving a lot of space to issues that he in fact *doesn't* believe are among the causes. If you go into all the reasons you think cause something, maybe you could write a book on the topic. But if you go into all the reasons you *don't* think cause something, your book can be enormous.
I guess this can be a good reference book if you need one, as it summarizes a lot of ideas from a lot of authors and documents a lot of violence's decline. But there's an opportunity cost for the reader here, and if you're only casually interested in the topic, I would recommend only reading the introduction and the conclusion.
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