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This book asserts that violence has decreased. I can set this aside as a worthy discussion. However, that is just the hook to catch readers. The purpose here is spreading ideologies to explain why violence has decreased.

The Bad:
Well, it turns out Pinker puts much of his faith in the status quo (i.e. power) as directly responsible, i.e. the State ("Leviathan") and Capitalism ("Gentle Commerce").

Let us consider status quo bias:
1) One can argue that it is resistance to power that has brought much of the decrease in violence we see today! After all, slavery and colonialism were the most profitable Capitalist ventures, backed and enabled by the growth of States. Elites sure are innovative at co-opting grassroots demands (and then smugly taking credit for it!), like the liberal elite property-holders who did all they could to thwart democracy ("mob rule") until it became advantageous to run as "democrats" (while power migrated from the political sphere to the private economic sphere of one-dollar-one-vote).

2) Even if such violent power structures were capable of forcing an increase in material production, must we assume they are the only options? Have we really reached "The End of History" in finding the optimal social system, as another status quo shill put it? (Indeed, we might soon reach the end of history given climate change and other destruction of crucial Earth systems, but never mind that; Pinker just picks out the "science" that conforms to status quo triumphalism)
...Euro/Americentric Liberal elitists and their useful idiots (Pinker?) place their faith in "the Enlightenment" (similarly, the "Founding Fathers") as the foundational social movement in human history, but we should look beyond Orwellian history, towards accounts that do not just assume whatever is written by the victors is the totality of reality. The autonomous communities not requiring and openly resisting the violent shepherding by authority are indeed written out of history...

I tried to re-read these 800+ pages to give a thorough unpacking, but frankly there are better uses of one's time. I am thankful for The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions which brings an accessible dose of decolonization ideologies to expose just how atrocious Pinker's ideologies are.

...and these beautiful (negative) reviews, enjoy!
Brilliant review #1
Brilliant review #2
Inception of spicy reviews
...and one more
...in fact, there's an entire book (Reality Denial: Steven Pinker’s Apologetics for Western-Imperial Violence), co-written by Edward S. Herman (who also lead the co-writing of that famous Chomsky book on foreign policy media: Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media)

The Missing:
I used to first recommend the following critiques on power and appraisal of popular resistance and decision-making for Western audiences given their accessibility. They are still useful:
-Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky
-The Democracy Project: A History, a Crisis, a Movement

However, to appreciate why socialism in 20th century revolutions took place in the Global South/periphery is to build the historical context of the violence of global capitalism. This is crucial to avoid becoming the smug Western armchair critic that sees everyone else as primitive/violent/"totalitarian"/"anti-democratic"/"not real socialism", while at the same time failing to prevent the exportation of bombs and embargoes, or achieving economic democracy at home. Where to start?

1) I'm accumulating a playlist on Global South Socialism, featuring Vijay Prashad, Michael Parenti, Utsa Patnaik, Max Blumenthal, etc.:
--Highlights include:
i) Michael Parenti:
-on Cuban Revolution:
-full:
ii) Vijay Prashad
-on ideological censorship:
-"The Many Lives of Communism in the Third World":
-Washington Bullets: A History of the CIA, Coups, and Assassinations
-The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World
-The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South

2) Books on the history of global capitalism not glossing over its violence and contradictions:
-accessible intros:
-Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism (has reformist blind-spots towards empire, but very accessible intro to the history of economic development where long-term productivity gains require nurturing/protection from ruthless short-term market competition)
-The Agrarian Question in the Neoliberal Era: Primitive Accumulation and the Peasantry
-Capitalism: A Ghost Story
-A People's History of the United States (history from below instead of by the winners)
-A People's History of the World
...deeper dives:
-Capital and Imperialism: Theory, History, and the Present
-Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World
--Debt: The First 5,000 Years
-Perilous Passage: Mankind and the Global Ascendancy of Capital

3) Capitalism as the end of history?
-Intro on capitalism's dynamism being at the same time its volatility: Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: or, How Capitalism Works—and How It Fails
-Structural alternatives? Another Now: Dispatches from an Alternative Present
-Capitalist growth on a finite planet:
-Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World
-Facing the Anthropocene: Fossil Capitalism and the Crisis of the Earth System
-Capitalist State as a tool to manage class conflict:
-A Brief History of Neoliberalism
-The State and Revolution