Named one of Time magazine's "100 Most Influential People of All Time," Harvard professor Steven Pinker is a cognitive scientist whose thorough studies of language have led him to insights into the way humans form thoughts and engage the world. He has authored seven books, including the New York Times bestseller and Pulitzer Prize finalist The Blank Slate and the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award finalist How the Mind Works. His new book, The Better Angels of our Nature charts the decline of global violence from Biblical times to the present. Pinker argues that, despite current warfare, our modern cultural institutions prove our progress over the course of history into altogether better people, now living in the most peaceful era humankind has experienced.