Book: The Last Templar by Raymond Khoury

Martin is disappointed and knows that they have now lost Jerusalem. The chief Crusader William of Beaujeu, fell to poison and his mentor Aimard asks him to run away with an artifact given to him by William – an object in an ornate but small chest. Aimard convinces him that they need to leave in the only ship left, the Falcon Temple. This, Aimard explained, is far more crucial to stay and die, even if they slew some Saracens in the interim.  That ship was captained by Hugh. 

Cut to modern day. When the New York Metropolitan Museum displays ‘Treasures of the Vatican’ exhibit, four horsemen appear – the crowd takes them to be part of the show organized by the event managers; they proceed slowly towards the museum entrance. 

Tess Chaykin, her mother Eileen and her daughter Kim are in the museum at that time. When the horsemen casually behead a guard who came to stop them, the crowd realizes that they are not part of the show. Pandemonium breaks out and the horsemen gallop into the museum. 

Tess watches one of them taking an ornate box (the same that was in the prologue) and then gathers them all – others with the treasures looted – and gallops away. He has also seen her once but his face was covered except for the eyes. 

The detective Sean Reilly who arrives at the scene is astounded at the carnage he witnessed. His deputy Nick Aparo is equally aghast. 

Back in Vatican, Cardinal Brugnone, meanwhile, is dismayed to read that one of the stolen items was a ‘multi-geared rotor encoder’.  The Cardinal knows but distracts the person and later, he is determined to defeat the enemy from gaining any benefit from the use of it. He needs to find and stop them – whoever they are. 

Tess, in the meanwhile is also looking for the item which the fourth horseman specifically took and stumbles across the description of the same multi geared rotor encoder. 

Tess is stunned to learn of a Templar connection with the device. From a friend who was in the museum and was injured in the same attack. 

Meanwhile, stupidly, one of the toughman tries to intimidate an antique dealer who does not blush at selling illegal items. The man’s name is Gus Waldron. The antique dealer, Lucian Boussard agreed to find a man who is not finicky but recognizes the item as one stolen from the Vatican exhibit. This is too hot for him and also a chance to ease of increasing pressure from the Feds. He reports Gus, knowing that he will return the next day to confirm the sale and agree to the money. 

What follows is a high action drama. Gus realizes that he has been set up. All the tell tale signs are there. Unmarked cars moving into positions all around. When he reaches Gus, he confirms his suspicions, takes Gus as hostage and sets him calmly on fire before pushing him onto the street. He then lets loose a volley into the cops and runs. He throws a slowing cab’s driver out and takes off in it, but Reilly, who is in his jeep follows him and after very high nerve biting drama, manages to collar him. And sees that he has an ornate cross on him. 

Reilly meets Tess and is intrigued by her theory on Templars. He did not connect the cross with the Templars until she mentioned it to him. 

Reilly and Tess feel a growing attraction to each other but Reilly is frustrated by her refusal to step away and let the detectives do the work. She is searching for two Templar experts whom she wants to track down to help her with her investigation. 

Gus in the meanwhile is tracked to the hospital where he is admitted and an unknown man dressed as a hospital orderly injects something into him which causes his heart to fail. They think that it is a heart attack until the coroner spots the needle mark and identifies the substance that was injected. 

Gus provides the name of just one person who hired him to the unknown assailant, due to torture – before he is killed, of course. That person is tending horses in a stable and is brutally murdered and a fire started in the stable. Reilly and team are now desperate to talk to the remaining two guys – unless it is the forth guy who is hunting the other three. 

Cue the third guy who was in hiding and unwisely decides to steal back to his apartment one time in the middle of the night and is pushed off the roof of the building to his death. 

Tess in the meanwhile is doggedly pursuing her investigation and seeks the help of two professors she used to know through her archeological father. She zeroes in on Vance but he seems to have clean disappeared from the earth after her wife died. She finally tracks him down to the cemetery on the anniversary of his wife’s death but realizes that he, Vance, is indeed the fourth horseman who took the artefact. (How did she know is a bit obscure and artificial but we will skip that). She is tazered and taken to his hiding place (in a ruined and abandoned church, as she learns later). He is followed and Tess manages to escape from him, leaving her wallet but taking the documents he needs to decipher with the crypto machine he took from the Met. She manages to escape through the tunnels. She meets Reilly and gives the document to be copied. However, she gets a phone call from home and realizes that Vance has visited her mother and is threatening the lives of her mom and daughter (subtly, so that only Tess knows). Stupidly, she decides to run (without telling Reilly) with the original and gives it to Vance, who takes it and promptly disappears. 

There is another thread where de Angelis, a cleric, joins the investigation. He is a clerical representative from the Vatican, willing to supply the background information as required but soon we realize that it is more than that. He is deeply suspicious of Tess and wants to ‘take care of her’ when the time is right. She is the threat: the FBI is simply interested in nabbing Vance and the murderers of the other three but Tess will not rest until she finds out the basic cause. 

We realize that the document that Tess filched and returned contains the text which is decoded by the machine that Vance has. 

Now comes another absurdity in the story. By the photos taken in the luggage where it was earlier transported, FBI agents manage to reconstruct it and decode the copy of the document. (Really? How?). They use it to decode the document. This describes the ancient story where Martin (yes, the one in the prologue) is given two copies of the document by the dying priest and asked to take it back to  the Templar homeland. 

When Tess discovers where Vance may have gone, she makes another run to the airport (to Turkey) but is followed by Riley who decides to join her in the search. Unknown to both, there is a lackey of de Angelo in the plane, watching them and de Angelo himself, shorn of his clerical vestment and in a nice suit, goes to their destination in a private Gulf Stream to intercept them. Reilly joining Tess is a complication, yes, but not something that cannot be ‘managed’. 

When they discover that the church is now at the bottom of a lake – an artificial lake created by building of a dam, they dive down to get it. They come back with a package, only to find Vance sitting on the boat with armed guards. Tess hands the package to Vance who opens it only to find an astrolabe there. The real treasure sunk to the bottom of the sea, according to the note attached in the same bag. So, if it was all lost, why the secrecy? 

Before they can puzzle it out and also puzzle out how to escape from captivity by Vance, the guard is killed by a faraway bullet. They run in the car belonging to Vance. When they finally stop, Vance explains that what he is after is not treasure or riches but ‘the Truth’. 

What follows is highly enlightening. And based on facts. Many of you may already know the facts because other nonfiction works cover these but if you have not been reading those, these will be astonishing facts. First of all, the current bible has been compiled by selectively putting together some gospels – and leaving out most others which have conflicting information. Second, many of the others, especially the early ones, do not describe Jesus as the Son of God but simply a preacher, who preached universal love – no sign of the miracles there. Third, a gospel was written by Judas, who is the brother of Jesus. Fourth, at least one of these gospels describe a conjugal relationship between Mary Magdalene and Jesus. 

In addition, even the book of Mark, part of the New Testament, initially did not ascribe any divine powers to Jesus but was embellished later. In any case, all of the gospels were written at least 600 years after the death of Christ, which means that the stories were orally passed from mouth to mouth until then, giving rise to the possibility of distortion. 

All this is before we even talk about the Gnostic Bible, which is a set of books that advise you to look for peace and salvation inside you rather than depend on symbols and rituals, like all religions advise you to do.

On top of that, all three religions – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – are Abrahamic and believe in Abraham as the original Prophet. So the Templars were trying to unify all these religions based on historical facts, shorn of all the symbolism and miracles, and thereby eliminate religious strife, which is the largest cause of struggle and death in the world, historically speaking (Also true in reality). It cuts Reilly, who is deeply religious, to the quick and he decides then and there to send Vance back to the FBI and go back. Tess is not ready to accept it and she frees Vance and runs away with him in a jeep when Reilly is asleep. 

Hurt by the betrayal of Tess (yet again?) Reilly is pondering his next move when a helicopter comes to take him to the bishop. He learns that de Angelis is not what he seems and the bishop, Brugnone, tells him how important it is to protect belief in the current version of Christianity to avoid dumping a huge share of the population into despair and gloom. (Not to protect the interests of the Church per se but to avoid taking away the hope and trust in God that gives solace to countless millions who need this to find meaning in life and to cope with the vicissitudes of daily living). 

But on the whole, the story aims more for tension than realistic portrayal. Even though Tess keeps running away irresponsibly from the police, FBI and even Reilly, he keeps making excuses for her with a dog like devotion that rankles. She foolishly finds out onboard the rented trawler Savarona that Vance is capable of killing and that she herself could lose her life, when they are close to getting to the figurehead of the sunken boat. Yet, just after the captain of the ship was murdered in cold blood by Vance, she eagerly leans forward when the masthead was drawn up from the bottom of the sea to find out what secrets it may contain. Go figure. 

And it ends like a Hollywood action blockbuster, in the mid seas, in the middle of a raging storm with one boat containing a murderous and determined Vance and the other boat with Reilly and a murderous and determined de Angelis, both fighting to get to the masthead for different reasons of their own, both evil. 

And ends in a huge spurt of action where both Reilly and Tess doing what action movie heroes and heroines do, regardless of logic or consequences. 

A good read, if you leave your brain far away and just want to enjoy the ride. The historical background adds a little bit of heavy texture to the story, which is nice. 

The story goes a bit longer than that. Reilly and Tess survive – no, I am not giving away any twists; in stories like this the main characters always survive and are in a Greek island, recovering. Surprising twists happen there before the story ends on a satisfactory note. 

7/10

   = = Krishna

Book: A Star Called Henry by Roddy Doyle

Roddy Doyle is a master in the depiction of brutal Irish poverty and the realities of Irish life, especially among the less privileged. His books cover varied topics and many of them have been reviewed here earlier. Oh Play That Sound  and Paddy Clark Ha Ha Ha are two such, if you want to look up our earlier reviews of some books by this author. 

This book starts beautifully. Henry muses on his family. His grandmother was ‘old and leathery’ by forty. When she was twenty, she lost her family (to famine; they were reduced to eating grass in desperation to survive) and made her way to London. Being just fourteen then, she decides to offer her body to all for money to survive – she had never even been kissed till then. She was known just as Nash and no one knew of a second name for her. Her daughter, the mother of the narrator, Henry, was called Melody Nash. She too, grew up in poverty and had a lot of children. She was looking old and wasted just at thirty – She had and lost children – Henry (not the narrator but his elder brother who died and became the star in the title), Two Victors, Lil, and others. 

Melody Nash spends all her adolescence in a factory, boring holes on prayer beads made out of cattle horns. When she finds Henry Smart drunk and fallen on the ground – she ran into him, she realizes how filthy his dress is, how unwashed he is and how he is missing one leg – and proceeds to marry him. No fairytale romance here, just poor, illiterate folk trying to survive in the world that shows no sympathy to them. The essence and background of many of Roddy Doyle’s books, it manages to impress you every time. 

Henry Smart is a bouncer come ‘fixer’ in a brothel. He collects dues from people for others and part of his job is to kill those who are crooked, or simply those whom his masters want killed. When the first two (or three?) kids die, he is convinced that his crimes have everything to do with God’s punishment until little Henry, the narrator of the story is born strong. Unlike the dads in Irish author stories (remember Angela’s Ashes?) in this book Henry is very devoted to his family and loves his kids. 

But when his deeds catch up with him, he is forced to flee. As a last act, he rescues Henry and Victor from being lynched when they heckle the British King coming in profession. They never see him and they don’t live at home either. They survive. The five year old and the three year old by being street smart. Realizing that this is not enough, Harry finds a way for him to joining a school for education, where the teachers realize that he is smart for his age. 

He decides to run when trouble comes his way and there is a heartrending scene where he loses Victor to consumption. He then joins the Irish resistance army. 

When that crumbles and most of his fellow soldiers are killed, he escapes through a manhole and the path in the sewers that his dad had taught him. Finds Annie and works in a series of mines with the help of a stevedore whom Annie ‘persuaded’ to give him a chance. 

He then goes through being a revolutionary hero and follows Jack as the leader. Even though he does all the work and is ‘accepted’ by Jack as one of the inner circle, he gets no position or power in the new government. He simply is a worker ant, toiling to the glory of the coming Irish Republic. 

A detour here : This has the style of Roddy Doyle alright but unlike everyday items that permeate his stories (Paddy Clark Ha Ha Ha being an example) this one is bound into the Irish struggle for freedom as a constant backdrop. The loose connections to Sein Fenn is interesting. 

He finds again and marries his erstwhile primary school teacher whom he knows as Ms O’Shea. She is also part of the rebellion and while they escape after an act of sabotage against the English army, she is shot multiple times. So is Henry Smart but not fatally. 

They both recover, Henry very slowly. 

Later they ambush the mercenaries who were brought from England. He was captured in his granny’s house, thrown in a cell and brutally tortured. When he was sure that he will die – and proud that he had not divulged anything to the torturers even when beaten repeatedly and tortured – he is saved by another prisoner who gave him the coat and so was mistaken for Henry Smart and hauled off to be killed. 

Brutal stuff – not the usual Doyle territory but he travels here confidently, and it is still very interesting to read. 

The story moves on as to how he escaped and also ends brilliantly. There are shades of the French Revolution, where the revolution turned to eat its own creators, and how Henry Smart found himself in trouble from all angles. 

The ending is a bit heartbreaking and the nice tie to the brothel owner (the real one) who makes his way up in the new republic is effective. 

All in all, another good read from the author and this one a bit more weighty than his earlier books and up there with Paddy Clark Ha Ha Ha.

8/10

== Krishna

Book: A Fierce Radiance by Lauren Belfer

This is a historical fiction that is interesting to read and is multi faceted. I will dive right into the story.

Claire Shipley is dealing with patients at the Rockefeller Institute of Medical Research in New York. l. She is a photographer paid to take photographic evidence on the condition of the arrivals. Claire’s own daughter had died seven and a half years ago. Her husband left her and her younger son, Charlie, was with her. 

She witnesses the evolution of penicillin and its use – though not officially sanctioned yet – in saving lives. We learn that she is there covering the use of penicillin for the Life magazine as a photographer. 

She interviews the wife of a patient, an upper class man who got infected through a scratch while playing tennis in an exclusive club. She also remembers her own daughter, who fell and scraped her knees, and was dead three days after that.

The wife describes how the small scratch, which seemed of no account at all, developed into his being in a coma in a hospital in a short period thereafter. 

They meet a patient, Edward Reese who is near death. Dr Stanton is trying out an experimental drug called penicillin, recently discovered as an excretion from a fungus mold by a doctor called Alexander Fleming. He has to fly by the seat of his pants, because the dosage to use and the frequency are all not known. He uses penicillin grown in his own hospital by the efficient nurse Brocket. Patsy, Edward’s wife, is at her wits’ end, because she does not know whether her husband will survive even one more night. 

When penicillin finally shows its efficacy, Doctor Stanton  is thrilled. What kind of gets you to sit up and take notice is how people used to die for all kinds of ailments : tuberculosis was a killer; so was diphtheria; meningitis was a menace. Will all this be cured by this extract from a fungus called penicillin? A side story is Claire’s good-for-nothing husband who reports from England about the war and the simple minded devotion of Claire’s son Charlie to his father, who does not even deign to write a letter to his own son. (Claire and he have been divorced for a few years).

Claire is astounded to find, the very next day, that the patient was not only recovering but was sitting up in bed, reading the paper and having normal conversations. 

Claire tries to concentrate on her work – produces photographs for the story she will write, wandering around the outside of Rockefeller Institute where no one normally is even allowed, taking pictures. 

There are scenes where a Russian exile – a fellow scientist  called Sergei – now stops analyzing sewer waters inspired by the success of the ‘mold expellant’ penicillin. The background of War (after all, the Pearl Harbor attack had just happened) adds a layer of colour to the story. 

It is heartrending to see how Edward relapses into a severe reaction when they have run out of penicillin for the next dose on time (their capacity is very limited and governed by the fungal biological process). 

Even though Claire makes the cover of Life with a coverage of another story, she is overcome with disappointment when her story regarding penicillin is scrapped by the magazine. 

Dr Stanton surprises her by inviting her to dinner – in a phone call. 

The story veers off in a different direction where Claire and Charlie have established connection with her rich but estranged father and how for Charlie’s sake she bites back bitter questions she wanted to ask her own dad. Charlie and her father Rutherford seem to be developing a nice bond. 

Jamie and Claire develop a closeness when she sees how decent he is, and finds that he is interested in her too. Jamie continues to work with the military. 

The story proceeds and branches into multiple layers which make this a multifaceted and lively story to read. It is part love story – Claire’s first husband, Bill Shipley a non caring, non supportive, selfish man, ending in divorce. Charlie’s continued worship of his father, and Claire’s encouragement of it (as she does not want her views to influence the relationship of Charlie with the absent father). Then there is the ever present developments of WW II in the background, starting with the bombing of the Pearl Harbour and the continued setback to the Allies (including US and Russia) in the war’s developments – reversals come fast and furious. Then there is the scientific developments regarding the new ‘miracle’ drug called penicillin. Lovely. 

Penicillin production is now taken over by the government and Jamie is in the army base trying to help deliver it to the troops. There is not enough to go around the people, whose relatives are sick, are desperate and besiege the Rockfeller research institute in the hopes of getting their hands on one. 

As Jamie and Claire get close together, and Charlie and Rutherford also like him, he finds peace and is as close to home as he has felt in years. 

Jamie and Claire get close and get into a relationship and Jamie is mobbed when he tries to take Claire out for dinner with the desperate people trying to put their hands in his pockets in the hopes of finding penicillin vials there. 

Meanwhile, in the sample collected by Tia, who is the lead researcher in Jamie’s lab and also his sister, she notices a peculiar blue colour and effect.  She wonders if she has found an alternative and the trials on rats are also going well. 

But she is found dead at the foot of a hill and the death is ruled ‘accident’. An investigative journalist and a government investigator doubt it.  Jamie is stuck in deep grief. 

Jamie, remembering that Tia had talked of a miracle development of an unusual blue colour, goes to her lab. He finds that not only is the vial missing, but also the documentation has been torn off. He now suspects foul play. 

Meanwhile, Rutherford is offered a miracle drug by Nick, an assistant to Jamie and he buys it from him. He has bought out a medicine lab from Hartford, and makes plans to produce it there. 

When Claire somehow gets into the lab and takes pictures, she finds that her house has been vandalized and the pictures stolen. She is shaken. We later learn that it was the work of some agents employed by Rutherford, though he did not know that they would break into his own daughters house at that time – when he found out, he immediately fired them and hired another crew to protect his industrial secrets. 

When Charlie suddenly runs a high fever, Claire goes crazy with fear of losing him too. Rutherford makes a decision to use his untested drug. Jamie uses himself as a guinea pig to ensure that it won’t kill Charlie before trying it on Charlie. Charlie survives but unexpectedly goes deaf. 

When this medicine was tested on interned Japanese, they found that these side effects (blindness in some, deafness in others) occur there too. 

Jamie, when he looks at the brilliant blue colour of the vaccine, accuses Rutherford of murdering his sister and walks out on both Claire and Rutherford. Claire is heartbroken. 

Claire meets Bill, her husband accidentally and finds that he has remarried. Knowing him to be a tenacious reporter, she gives him all the details on Tia’s death and the miracle medicine. He gets too close to the truth and the government investigator Andrew Barnett arranges for his accidental death while traveling in a train. This is so that penicillin does not become a scandal when the government is trying to use it to help the troops in WW II

Nick meanwhile dies when a Japanese bomb falls on his floating hospital (ship) that carried penicillin to the troops. We realize now that he did not kill Tia but he did steal her medicine to make money for himself. (And he sold it to Rutherford for much less than he hoped to get for it).

We realize through the reporter Marcus Kreindler that it was Sergei who killed Tia. He was an agent for the Russians but was converted as a double agent (after the event)  by the FBI. 

Claire confronts her father and accuses him of murdering Tia and breaking into her house. He denies the death 

Now add the layers of murder mystery and emotional drama to the layers you already have and you have a rich tapestry as the background for the story. It keeps your full interest by this time. 

The ending is realistic and the decisions that all the characters have to make feel real. The story is told very well – this has not many happy endings, and the aches and yearnings of the characters come through, but it feels good. 

It deserves more credit than I see in review blogs and I would rate it at least a 8/10

   = = Krishna

Book: The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker

Having been impressed with the author’s earlier book How the Mind Works, I decided to give this one a try. If you do, you will not be disappointed. The book educates, astonishes and repays the effort you put into finishing this large book handsomely. 

This book is all about why violence has declined in the world. Steven Pinker (who wrote the excellent How the Mind Works that we reviewed earlier) lays out the arguments about the almost constant decline in violence on earth (at a macro level) from the evolution of man. This may surprise you if you either think that the two World Wars formed the acme of violence in the world or, if like most people, you think that violence is increasing in society but Steven lays out a very cogent argument in favour of his argument. 

He first talks about the six trends of human history – various eras where a portion of the decline was noticed; he talks about five inner demons and four better angels. He also talks about five historical forces. 

The summarization is just that : an overview of what follows. They are interesting and worth reading, but if you just want the details (which are fascinating and gripping) and want to skip this, you can safely do so, as this is about the rest of the book. You will not lose anything by skipping this intro. In addition, don’t judge the rest of the book by the intro and give up on this book – in case you are not interested in the summation given there. The book is absolutely fascinating. 

He starts with the violence seen in almost all of the old human remains unearthed and starts with how pervasive violence must have been to give this overwhelming tilt to almost all findings of those periods. 

He then starts with the Bible and shows how violent it has been (the Old Testament that is). You see here echoes of Richard Dawkins’s argument in The God Delusion on the same topic but in a book of a different emphasis. He also talks about violence that was prevalent in Shakespeare and even children’s tales from Brothers Grimm, at a much later date in history. 

He talks about the insensitivity of even the early twentieth century ads where spanking a wife and raping were considered humorous. 

He then moves on to the inherent nature of violence in humans. He starts with our closest living relatives – genetically speaking – the chimps and their propensity for violence and the genetic advantages that helped promote such calculated violence. 

He then traces why city states meant less violence, often mandated by the ruler for his benefit. What follows is a fascinating expose of how primitive societies, even the most peaceful as The Semai of Malaysia or an equally pacific tribe of Indonesia had murder rates that are higher than even the most violent of modern cities – statistics which belie their peaceful reputation. 

He also reviews the barbaric practice of witch hunting – in the literal sense, where thousands of women ‘confessed’ under torture that they were indeed witches and then executed. He also talks about human sacrifices including the Indian suttee. He shows why those practices gradually disappeared from the world and gives a number of fascinating anecdotes about the practice when it was prevalent in ancient times. One of his revelations that, once it started accelerating, a whole number of personal scores were settled by accusing an inconvenient woman (and in very few cases, men) of being witches. 

He tackles how violence has decreased in area after area – the cruelty of slavery where the owners factord in ‘loss during transit’ into their business model as many slaves died in the galley of the ship during transportation is described well and he traces the abolition of slavery; he even talks about the punishments – imprisonment – for nonrepayment of debt or even forcible possession of the debtor’s property being taken. And how that process was humanized through bankruptcy laws. 

He then turns his attention to the officially sanctioned mass murder – also called war – and how that also came to be used very rarely. What made humans appreciate the suffering of other humans and, later, of animals? He credits the creation of mass publishing by Gutenberg and the explosion of literacy. By reading fiction (the dominant subject matter of books at that time) people were able to both put themselves in the story characters’ shoes and also learn about far off lands and how people lived there. The stories taught them to think from the viewpoint of others, and also opened their eyes beyond the parochial concerns of just their immediate surroundings. 

The explosion of ideas that followed this development drove most of the humanistic development of social norms. 

He then talks of the regression caused by nationalism when killing – this time to defend the nation or preemptively strike to avoid a threat to the nation – was approved again. The nationalistic sentiment, mixed with the ideology that one’s nation is better than other nations, gave rise to fascism and also, replacing the nation with class, communism. This increased the violence level. However, war as a ‘noble purpose’ had lost its allure and thanks to a lot of writers and filmmakers, war was portrayed in all its viciousness and was personalized in books like All Quiet on the Western Front and A Farewell to Arms or movies like The Big Parade. 

He explores the taboo surrounding a nuclear strike and the use of chemical weapons in war. 

He turns his attention to genocide and delves into the psychology that makes men kill en masse – even women and children – solely because they belong to a group of opposed ideology, ethnicity, religious belief or some other factor. 

Next in line is terrorism, and with it, the terrifying possibility of a small nuclear weapon being used in a terrorist attack. With his dispassionate eye, he looks at the data and draws compelling conclusions. I will leave it to you to read the book to learn what those conclusions are and why, The answer does need to go with the reasoning to make any sense, but the answer is definitely surprising. 

He takes the ‘Data Analysis’ eye to other crimes like racism, then rape, and then domestic abuse. In each case he shows why the popular intuitive belief that we live in dangerous times is wrong, at least compared to the past ages. He does the same for children’s rights and finally the rights of LGBT groups – that is, a historical view of how far we have come in our changed attitudes. 

He then moves on to animal rights and tells how animal cruelty is different from other discriminations in that meat eating and therefore killing innocent animals is not going to go the way of abolition of slavery or women’s rights but will follow a different trajectory. Yes, the animals will be humanely killed. 

He also offers a surprising answer to why some cultures are still not ‘progressive’ by Western standards. This is because they resisted the printing press and therefore the transfer of ideas and views about how people very dissimilar to themselves live and think and therefore develop an empathy through exposure to ideas that are bigger than their own locality, community, nation. 

Very interesting. I have never met this argument before; I suspect very few have. But it has the ring of truth in it, if you pause to think about it. 

He goes on to explore the mindsets that trigger violence. This is the second angle of analysis. He covers gain (hunting, violence to achieve an aim), revenge, and ideology. 

After these negative motives, he turns to innate forces which stop people from killing each other senselessly – most of the people, that is. One is empathy. Next comes self-control. He even explores genetic changes in just the last hundred years that may have driven humans to become less aggressive – even though many think that the time frame is too short to effect changes of behaviour noticeable at a societal level. 

He concludes with great arguments. If there is one small thing I can nitpick, it is that the conclusion echoes (and summarizes, it is true) some of the same arguments that appear in the meat of the book. Even though it is interesting to read again in a different context, you feel that the book could have been shortened a bit without much loss of value. However, given the immense canvas the author has chosen as his subject matter and given the virtuoso performance in communicating to us and convincing us that violence has indeed gone down in the world, he does a stellar job and so you tend to easily forgive this redundancy. 

9/10. Wow! It opens your eyes to so many facets you had not thought about. 

== Krishna