Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress

Steven Pinker's 2018 sequel to Better Angels: the case, across fifteen measures — life, health, sustenance, wealth, inequality, the environment, peace, safety, democracy, knowledge, quality of life, happiness and more — that the human condition has improved and keeps improving, plus a defense of reason, science, and humanism as the engines, and an argument that progress is fragile rather than automatic.

Gates had spent years calling The Better Angels of Our Nature the best book he had read in a decade; this one displaced it — "Enlightenment Now is not only the best book Pinker's ever written. It's my new favorite book of all time" (2018). The structure explains the appeal: fifteen separate indicators, each argued from long-run data, is almost exactly the framing of a foundation annual letter — pick the indicators, get the trend right, then argue about causes.

The useful chapters for a builder are the unfashionable ones: inequality (not the same as unfairness, and the global figures surprise), the environment (decoupling is real — growth and resource use have separated in rich countries), and existential risk, where Pinker argues for engineering away specific hazards instead of cultivating dread. Disagree with individual chapters — many specialists do — but arguing fifteen theses strictly from trendlines is itself the method lesson.