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From the "folk hero of Davos" (Vox) , Fox News antagonist, and author of the New York Times bestseller Utopia for Realists, a revolutionary argument that our innate goodness and cooperation have been the greatest factors in humanity's successIf there is one belief that has united the left and the right, psychologists and philosophers, ancient thinkers and modern ones, it is the tacit assumption that humans are bad. It's a notion that drives newspaper headlines and guides the laws that shape our lives. From Machiavelli to Hobbes, Freud to Pinker, the roots of this belief have sunk deep into Western thought. Human beings, we're taught, are by nature selfish and governed primarily by self-interest.But what if it isn't true? By providing a new historical perspective on the last 200,000 years of human history, internationally bestselling author Rutger Bregman sets out to prove that we are in fact hard-wired for kindness, geared toward cooperation rather than competition, and more inclined to trust rather than distrust one another.