“A Reading List: Part 5.” Lobell continues looking at kool books for our time. Lacking the attention span to read books, Lobell listens to audiobooks, so all the books we talk about are available in audio version. Right now we are interested in the question, “What happened?” For thousands of years human civilization bumped along with great sophistication occasionally popping up, such as Rome and periods of ancient China. But there was never much wealth and people were always short on food. Then 250 years ago, things took off. Why? A key book we will discuss is Stephen Pinker’s “Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress.”
