Iconoclast: Ideas That Have Shaped the Culture Wars is an anthology of essays by some of the world's most prominent intellectuals on crucial social, cultural, philosophical, scientific and political issues. Philosopher and Professor of Bioethics Peter Singer addresses many of our current misconceptions about extreme poverty and also discusses whether true altruism exists. Similarly, Harvard Professor Steven Pinker in a chapter reprinted from his book Enlightenment Now! examines why we have difficulty excepting the progress we have made in relation to sexism, racism, and homophobia, as well as overall inequality. Associate Professor John McWhorter examines the data and contends that police violence towards Black Americans may really be an availability heuristic created by media attention. Australian geneticist Jennifer Ann Marshall Graves reviews the research on the genetics of transgenderism and the search for a "gay" gene and discusses why gender may not be completely socially constructed. Additionally, Helen Pluckrose, expanding on her work from Cynical Theories, examines how social constructionist theories of gender are damaging to men and women and why critical race theory tends to be oversimplistic and counterproductive. Iconoclast also contains work by the evolutionary biologist Heather Heying, economist Gigi Foster, and others. The central ideas expressed in these essays challenge many commonly held ideological and political views of reality and what is deemed to be the truth.
