Humankind: A Hopeful History

A review of the data & evidence that humanity is kinder then we usually give ourselves credit for. Detailed & thorough but still engaging & inspiring - a great read!

Lovely book, which gives you hope for humanity in general. It’s not fluffy rainbow and flowers stuff, his arguments for the basic goodness of humanity is all based on genuine research over many years. He also points out flaws in some well known studies that suggest people are basically cruel or indifferent to others. I am recommending it to everyone I know!

Quite interesting read thought provoking

A welcome change to read something full of positivity and hope. It's a welcome tonic, a mental serotonin boost in these troubled times globally, and increasingly, regionally and nationally. They say that 'every day's a school day's. Here, almost every page sheds new light on on a facetime of human life. Here's a book where the title does complete justice to the contents within.

I ordered this book after wanting to read a somewhat positive spin on human nature given our almost constant exposure to the barrage of stories about how mankind is nothing but evil and we are all just animals waiting for societal breakdown before we can unleash our worst natures on the world. Happily, this book provides very good evidence that, at the very least, the information we receive might not be the full story. I'm not fully convinced, having read several other tomes on human behavior and definitely seeing some 'real life' evidence of human wickedness, but still, this book supplies plentiful evidence that humankind is not all-wicked, and in fact might even be able to achieve great things were it not for our seeming willingness to willfully forget about our nature and our past and believe only the worst about ourselves and our societies. There are not many books where you read them and HOPE that what they are espousing is the truth because it will help you to feel more optimistic during the rather dark times we seem to currently be living through but this is definitely one of those books. I came away from it with a newfound respect for mankind and a genuine bit of inspiration to help make the world a little bit better, even if only in my local community. (I feel community is the missing ingredient in society today that has allowed use to stray so far from our warmer 'communal' natures). I had to look up lots of things outside of the book to confirm whether or not the author was bending the truth a little and for the most part I was pleasantly surprised. In short, it really does seem that humans are not as bad as we have all been led to believe.

Rutger writes in an engaging style and gives factual arguments to smash our long held ideas of cynicism about other people. His central arguments are strong and full of powerful anecdotes to enhance any conversation you may have about his ideas. To be critical he is guilty of the same journalistic selective presentation of facts to make his case at times that he castigates others for. A particular howler is using Christian doctrine of ‘depravity’ to misrepresent the Christian view of human kind as wholly bad. Any reading of the bible shows both good and bad parts of human nature and the son of a pastor must know enough of the doctrine in question to know that it is only in relation to perfect God that man can never reach an acceptable standard. Again he glosses over apparent problems with behaviourist theory without pointing out that it is the misunderstanding of real motivations - rewards that is the problem rather than the theory. That said , if I could have bought everyone in my family a hardback copy of this book which I read on Kindle for Christmas then I would have done!

Grat content but page margins of paperback could be wider.

Excellent read, informative with many examples and stories reflecting the chapters. Highly recommend!