I'm an experimental social psychologist and Scientia Professor at the University of New South Wales, Sydney. I grew up in Hungary, and after an adventurous escape I ended up in Sydney. I received my DPhil and DSc degrees from the University of Oxford, and I spent various periods working at Oxford, Stanford, Heidelberg, and Giessen. For my work I received the Order of Australia, as well as the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award, the Alexander von Humboldt Prize, and a Rockefeller Fellowship. As somebody who experienced totalitarian communism firsthand, I am very interested in the reasons for the recent spread of totalitarian, tribal ideologies, potentially undermining Western liberalism, undoubtedly the most successful civilization in human history.
I wrote...
The Psychology of Populism: The Tribal Challenge to Liberal Democracy
This book contains a number of essays discussing the recent rise of populist movements representing a major challenge for liberal democracies. In particular, the psychological factors behind the rise of populism are considered.
Unlike liberal democracy based on the Enlightenment values of individual freedom, autonomy, and rationality, both right-wing and left-wing populism offer collectivist, autocratic, and tribal solutions rooted in the evolutionary history of our species. The chapters offer a comprehensive overview of the psychology of populism, organized into four sections. The rise of populism and tribalism is a highly topical issue. The book should be of interest to everyone, and especially to students, researchers, and applied professionals interested in understanding current affairs and the global rise of populism.
This is an incredibly interesting, well-written, and informative book that lays out the case for the amazing success of liberal democracies based on the Enlightenment values of liberty, universal humanism, and individualism.
I consider this book an essential reading for everyone who has been brainwashed by the current pessimistic and catastrophizing ideologies attacking this most successful of all human civilization.
Pinker is an outstanding writer, and the empirical evidence he marshals for the success and values of the Enlightenment in promoting human flourishing is utterly persuasive.
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2018 ONE OF THE ECONOMIST'S BOOKS OF THE YEAR
"My new favorite book of all time." --Bill Gates
If you think the world is coming to an end, think again: people are living longer, healthier, freer, and happier lives, and while our problems are formidable, the solutions lie in the Enlightenment ideal of using reason and science. By the author of the new book, Rationality.
Is the world really falling apart? Is the ideal of progress obsolete? In this elegant assessment of the human condition in the third…
This book is a real tour de force, applying the rationale of self-governing and naturally emerging evolutionary mechanisms to explain a wide variety of social, biological, cultural, and civilizational processes.
The book offers wonderful insights into such topics as the emergence of creative ideas, the growth of cities, the evolution of language, why state-controlled health care and education systems are often inefficient, the resilience of free-market economies, the rise of morality and trust as a consequence of natural social interactions, and much more besides.
Readable, entertaining, and full of incredibly useful information.
The New York Times bestselling author of The Rational Optimist and Genome returns with a fascinating, brilliant argument for evolution that definitively dispels a dangerous, widespread myth: that we can command and control our world.
The Evolution of Everything is about bottom-up order and its enemy, the top-down twitch—the endless fascination human beings have for design rather than evolution, for direction rather than emergence. Drawing on anecdotes from science, economics, history, politics and philosophy, Matt Ridley’s wide-ranging, highly opinionated opus demolishes conventional assumptions that major scientific and social imperatives are dictated by those on high, whether in government, business, academia,…
This is one of the best books I have read that helps to understand the reasons behind the fascinating and unpredictable rise of Western liberal civilization.
Humans lived in abysmal conditions for tens of thousands of years, poor, wretched, exposed to violence, war, illness, and untimely death for most of our evolutionary history. The emergence of Western liberal civilization is truly an amazing break with our miserable past. How did this happen?
The authors argue that there is a very precarious path to be followed between totalitarian and imposed order, and chaotic individualism, and Western civilization happened to find almost by chance that delicate balance as a result of a combination of historical, ideological, and other circumstances.
"Why is it so difficult to develop and sustain liberal democracy? The best recent work on this subject comes from a remarkable pair of scholars, Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson. In their latest book, The Narrow Corridor, they have answered this question with great insight." -Fareed Zakaria, The Washington Post
From the authors of the international bestseller Why Nations Fail, a crucial new big-picture framework that answers the question of how liberty flourishes in some states but falls to authoritarianism or anarchy in others--and explains how it can continue to thrive despite new threats.
Bill is an accomplished evolutionary psychologist and a good friend of mine.
In this book he offers an evolutionary account of how human beings came to survive and become the dominant species on the planet largely because of our unparalleled ability to cooperate and form successful groups.
The evolution of consciousness, a unique mental ability to imagine, represent, predict, and model the behavior of others played a crucial role in our evolutionary success, and the book offers a lucid, readable, and highly entertaining overview of our evolutionary history, focusing on the development and functions of our psychological habits and abilities in particular.
In the compelling popular science tradition of Sapiens and Guns, Germs, and Steel, a groundbreaking and eye-opening exploration that applies evolutionary science to provide a new perspective on human psychology, revealing how major challenges from our past have shaped some of the most fundamental aspects of our being.
The most fundamental aspects of our lives-from leadership and innovation to aggression and happiness-were permanently altered by the "social leap" our ancestors made from the rainforest to the savannah. Their struggle to survive on the open grasslands required a shift from individualism to a new form of collectivism, which forever altered the…
Madeleine Albright is a former US Secretary of State, and this book combines her fascinating political insights with an acute awareness of the ever-present threat of tribal ideologies turning virulent and potentially destroying liberal democracy.
She is uniquely equipped to accomplish this task. She was born in Eastern Europe, like myself, and so personally acquainted with the horrors of Fascism and totalitarianism. Her political and scholarly skills are admirably suited to offer an unparalleled fusion of deep historical insights and highly relevant political warnings.
Fascism, tribalism, and the human evolutionary propensity to identify with a tribal group and potentially lose all common sense and reason are ever-present dangers.
The rise of totalitarian ideologies and movements such as BLM, critical race theory, Antifa, and woke extremism on the left, and authoritarian quasi-fascist narratives on the right like QAnon, Proud Boys, Orban, Putin, Erdogan, and others represent equally serious challenges that transcend the traditional left–right political divide.
A personal and urgent examination of Fascism in the twentieth century and how its legacy shapes today's world, written by one of America's most admired public servants, the first woman to serve as U.S. secretary of state
A Fascist, observes Madeleine Albright, "is someone who claims to speak for a whole nation or group, is utterly unconcerned with the rights of others, and is willing to use violence and whatever other means are necessary to achieve the goals he or she might have."
The twentieth century was defined by the clash between democracy and Fascism, a struggle that created uncertainty…
As a trauma therapist and dedicated researcher, I love uncovering valuable insights within lesser-known books. There are hidden gems, free from the pressure of commercial success, crafted by authors deeply committed to research, understanding, and the art of writing itself. Their dedication resonates with me, as I believe in the profound value of information and the power of critical thinking. Through my own book, Traumatization and Its Aftermath, I aim to emphasize that psychological concepts often lose their depth in translation and my mission is spreading awareness and fostering a deeper understanding of trauma and its intricate facets. With that idea in mind, I chose these five titles.
A fresh take on the difference between trauma and hardship in order to help accurately spot the difference and avoid over-generalizations.
The book integrates the latest findings in brain science, child development, psycho-social context, theory, and clinical experiences to make the case that trauma is much more than a cluster of symptoms to be tamed, but instead best understood as development gone off course, away from growth and towards (only) survival.
This book prompts a profound shift in perception, inviting to view trauma as an intricate and diverse experience, a point of view that ultimately leads to sharper treatment and, hopefully, more healing. It encourages a transition from asking, "What happened to you?" to the deeper question, "What is your relationship with what happened to you?"
Traumatization and Its Aftermath: A Systemic Approach to Understanding and Treating Trauma Disorders
The book is comprehensive, bold, and practical-a much-needed resource for the assessment and treatment of trauma. Instead of the traditional focus on the overall importance of healing, Traumatization and its Aftermath decodes why some people don't heal as easily as others, analyzes the various failures of diagnosis, and explains how to make therapeutic interventions truly effective.
This book offers a systemic deep dive into traumatization that clarifies myths and misinformation about the entire spectrum of trauma and provides both clinicians and non-clinicians with the right level of validation, preventive measures, conceptualization methodology, assessment tools, and healing facts that have not…
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