In today’s modern world, we are largely isolated from the kind of savagery our ancestors faced on a daily basis. Although violence was as natural to our evolutionary development as sex and food, it has become foreign to most of us: at once demonized and glamorized, but almost always deeply misunderstood. Our hard-earned and hard-wired instincts—our evolved and trained ability to survive and overcome violent encounters—have been compromised. The Gift of Violence tells the story of this vulnerability and provides the average person with all the knowledge they need to reduce the likelihood of becoming a victim of violence—and to survive a violent encounter. Based both on the author’s decades of experience teaching everyday people how to defend themselves and on a rational approach to the scientific data, The Gift of Violence offers clear, easy-to-remember lessons for people of all ages and abilities. It is designed to empower those who've been affected by violence, or are concerned that they or their loved ones could be—in short, to help good people become more dangerous to bad people.

Matt Thornton has been teaching functional martial arts for more than thirty years and holds a 5th degree black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. His organization, Straight Blast Gym, has more than seventy locations worldwide and has produced champion MMA fighters as well as world-class self-defense and law enforcement instructors. He lives with his wife Salome and their five children in Portland, Oregon.