With those four men listed as the authors, how could this have been such an uninteresting book? It’s the transcript of a debate which took place in Toronto several years ago. Pinker and Ridley made the optimistic case, de Botton and Gladwell responded as pessimists. Pinker was the strongest, laying out a powerful case for steady improvement in the human condition, though he seemed (more than) a bit smug about climate change, among other challenges. Reading what he said now that we’ve had COVID and the invasion of Ukraine, I still think he’s essentially right. But to understand the argument better, one should read their books, not this one, which may have worked well as a debate on stage, but not as a text to read. Disappointed.