Rather than skimming through it, I finally read all of Steven Pinker's "Better Angels of our Nature." I'm guessing that the one thing others have not discussed is his description of the crazy, utopian 1960s. In a nutshell, he's not for it. It was a period of the relaxation of self-control -- "Do your own thing, Let it all hang out, If it feels good do it, Take a walk on the wild side." What happens out of all of this is what happens to, for example, the why-don't-you-all-fade-away band, the Who , where as he says one of the band members end up being a homicidal maniac, running over his bodyguard and such. For a peaceful society, you have to eschew these temptations to be free. If you're not up for it, perhaps you're lucky enough to be like Pinker and have a mother who dissuaded him from becoming other than the perfect mensch. So he's ostensibly telling us the good news -- society has gotten better; much better -- while warning us a...