Steven Pinker: By the Book

The New York Times:

The author of “The Language Instinct,” “The Blank Slate” and, most recently, “The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century” has never gotten in trouble for reading a book. “Just for writing them.”

What books are currently on your night stand?

“How Could This Happen: Explaining the Holocaust,” by Dan McMillan. “Severed: A History of Heads Lost and Heads Found,” by Frances Larson. “Ascent of the A-Word: A_ism, the First Sixty Years,” by Geoffrey Nunberg. “The Enlightenment,” by Anthony Pagden. “Two Cultures? The Significance of C. P. Snow,” by F. R. Leavis.

What was the last truly great book you read?

With the serene confidence that only a brilliant theoretical physicist can get away with, David Deutsch’s “The Beginning of Infinity” defends the unfashionable view that the Enlightenment inaugurated an era of unlimited intellectual and moral progress. The key is the human mind’s infinite combinatorial power, embedded in a culture that allows conjectures about the world (including the social and political world) to be tested and criticized.

Read the whole story: The New York Times