Humankind

THE SUNDAY TIMES AND NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERA Guardian Daily Telegraph New Statesman and Daily Express Book of the YearHugely highly and happily recommended Stephen FryYou should read Humankind. Youll learn a lot (I did) and youll have good reason to feel better about the human race Tim HarfordMade me see humanity from a fresh perspective Yuval Noah HarariIts a belief that unites the left and right psychologists and philosophers writers and historians. It drives the headlines that surround us and the laws that touch our lives. From Machiavelli to Hobbes Freud to Dawkins the roots of this belief have sunk deep into Western thought. Human beings were taught are by nature selfish and governed by self-interest.Humankind makes a new argument: that it is realistic as well as revolutionary to assume that people are good. By thinking the worst of others we bring out the worst in our politics and economics too.In this major book internationally bestselling author Rutger Bregman takes some of the worlds most famous studies and events and reframes them providing a new perspective on the last 200000 years of human history. From the real-life Lord of the Flies to the Blitz a Siberian fox farm to an infamous New York murder Stanley Milgrams Yale shock machine to the Stanford prison experiment Bregman shows how believing in human kindness and altruism can be a new way to think - and act as the foundation for achieving true change in our society.It is time for a new view of human nature.