Guardian article on The Secret Peace

Really great full-length article by Paul Harris in the Guardian/Observer last weekend. It talks about The Secret Peace and a few other related books that have recently just come out, like Steven Pinker's book on declining violence.

There was also a very lively debate in the article's comments section, with a lot of the usual detracting arguments I hear, but also a lot of defenders. The most common argument I often hear about the book is, "How can you say things are perfect when such-and-such is so bad?" Of course, this is a misunderstanding of my thesis; I don't deny the awful things happening in the world today. I only make the claim that it was worse in the past, and keeps improving. It was interesting to read in these comments a clear environmental spin (ie. Who cares what progress we make, since it's all going to be wiped out by global warming.) This is a British paper, and the environment is more of an issue there, so perhaps that's responsible for that trend in the comments. To those people I say: Read the chapter in my book about the environment. Oh, and then read the rest of the book, too.

Check out the full article and the comments here.