Humankind

I absolutely loved this book. Very well researched, written in a totally accessible style and incredibly optimistic. Bregman's theory is that as a species we are programmed to be sociable and to assist each other rather than to be at war and hate each other. Along the way he disproves some classic social experiments and theories including the Stanford experiment where students pretending to be guards were sadistic to prisoners and the famous Yale experiment where people administered shocks to lab assistants getting quiz questions wrong. Absolutely fascinating and very well argued, Bregman can sometimes come across as a little bit naive, but this is a great antidote to the pessimism in the news.