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'Bristles with pure, crystalline intelligence, deep knowledge and human sympathy' Richard Dawkins  

Is modernity really failing? Or have we failed to appreciate progress and the ideals that make it possible?

If  you follow the headlines, the world in the 21st century appears to be  sinking into chaos, hatred, and irrationality. Yet Steven Pinker shows  that this is an illusion - a symptom of historical amnesia and  statistical fallacies. If you follow the trendlines rather than the  headlines, you discover that our lives have become longer, healthier,  safer, happier, more peaceful, more stimulating and more prosperous -  not just in the West, but worldwide. Such progress is no accident: it's  the gift of a coherent and inspiring value system that many of us  embrace without even realizing it. These are the values of the  Enlightenment: of reason, science, humanism and progress.

The  challenges we face today are formidable, including inequality, climate  change, Artificial Intelligence and nuclear weapons. But the way to deal  with them is not to sink into despair or try to lurch back to a  mythical idyllic past; it's to treat them as problems we can solve, as  we have solved other problems in the past. In making the case for an  Enlightenment newly recharged for the 21st century, Pinker shows how we  can use our faculties of reason and sympathy to solve the problems that  inevitably come with being products of evolution in an indifferent  universe. We will never have a perfect world, but - defying the chorus  of fatalism and reaction - we can continue to make it a better one.