From the perspective of historical evidence, Pinker's book is indeed cherry picking. He has a huge number of footnotes but when you actually look through them,

From the perspective of historical evidence, Pinker's book is indeed cherry picking. He has a huge number of footnotes but when you actually look through them, you find that dozens and dozens are from the same book, which purports to explain thousands of years of history but wasn't even written by a professional historian. I find aspects of Pinker's argument to be convincing but his use of historical evidence is, frankly, not much higher than the level of the undergraduate students I teach. And since a large part of the book deals with historical change, that's problematic.