Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker

Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress by Steven Pinker
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I read this because Bill Gates said we should all read it (here's his review: www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Enlightenment-Now). I thought this book was pretty interesting and engaging even if at times I found it unpersuasive. the concept is basically that things have gotten better throughout history (I believe this) and that they will continue to get better. Furthermore, a belief that they will get better is inspirational to people to make it so, whereas a belief that everything is on the decline is discouraging and causes people to give up. So far so good.

I also agree with some of his cultural complaints about the left. I am a liberal so I'm not being snarky but vitriolic reactions from the left seem to be getting more common among regular people (as opposed to leaders of movements, politicians, and celebrities).

But there were some issues with his ideas and facts better explained by some angry environmentalists: www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/07/environmental-calamity-facts-steven-pinker. To be fair, he definitely does NOT deny global warming/climate change or the potential of a human calamity, he just thinks we're going to pull it with an informed increasingly progressive populace and new technologies.

And just more generally, you can't dismiss "black swans" based on statistics. That's the whole point of black swans! So yeah, I'm not convinced that something catastrophic won't suddenly smite us, whether it's an unexpected consequence of advancing climate change or something totally unanticipated.

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From Dawn to Decadence by Jacques Barzun

From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, 1500 to the Present by Jacques Barzun
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I did not especially enjoy reading this which is why I initially gave up after 200 pages. But I hate quitting things, and this is one of my dad's books, so I persisted. It's definitely interesting the way he handles European culture of 500 years, which is too long a time period even for a book this long, but it was a good try.

I initially was thinking 3 stars, but I bumped up my stars when I got to the end and read his summation of more modern history. I wonder how I would have viewed the previous 400-year summaries if I'd read the end first. It's a pretty good summary of life as we know it though it's pretty damning as well.

Finally, another reason for bumping to 4 stars is that I intend to keep the book as a list of "people and things to read about next."

Big demerit for spoiling the plots of many classical books on my to-read shelf! Almost enough to keep me to 3 stars, but I was feeling generous because I was so happy to be finished with this tome.

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Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I love this book. I loved every minute of it. It's a masterpiece about science, religion, literature, war and human destruction.

Tiger got to hunt,
Bird got to fly;
Man got to sit and wonder, "Why, why, why?"
Tiger got to sleep,
Bird got to land;
Man got to tell himself he understand.

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Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari

Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Fascinating and intricate. Harari builds a spiderweb, starting with the history of human thought, building and building until you understand how plausible his predictions of the future are.

This was the first time I had encountered this particular explanation of why we should study history- not just to avoid repeating it, but to understand that the actions that we take as a given are actually options. (See his section on lawns.)

This was the first time I had considered humanism in the particular way he explains it, and the first I even heard of dataism. Strongly recommend this book for its intellectual content, but it's worth mentioning that it was also so fun to read that I could not stop.

If you want the super short summary, Harari wrote this article for the Financial Times: https://www.ft.com/content/50bb4830-6...

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