chapters.indigo.ca: A Short History of Progress: Ronald Wright: Books

About this Book

Format:Trade Paperback

Dimensions:184 Pages, 5.13 x 7.94 in

Published:October 23, 2004

Publisher:House Of Anansi Press

The following ISBNs are associated with this title:
ISBN - 10:0887847064
ISBN - 13:9780887847066

From the Publisher

Each time history repeats itself, so it's said, the price goes up. The twentieth century was a time of runaway growth in human numbers, consumption, and technology, placing a colossal load on all natural systems, especially earth, air, and water -- the very elements of life. The great question of the twenty-first century is how, or whether, this can go on.

In A Short History of Progress Ronald Wright shows how our modern predicament is as old as civilization, a 10,000-year experiment we unleashed but have seldom controlled. Only by understanding the patterns of progress and disaster that humanity has repeated around the world since the Stone Age can we recognize the experiment's inherent dangers, and, with luck and wisdom, shape its outcome.

About the Author

Ronald Wright lives in Port Hope, Ontario.

Buzz About This Book

Watch a video of TVO's Allan Gregg in conversation with Ronald Wright.

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This title has appeared in 3 Top Ten lists. See the most recent lists below:

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Alice Ainsley , 16 months ago
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Average Customer Rating:
Reviews from the Community8 Reviews

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greatedcorn
interesting

2 years ago

this was an interesting book discussing the possibility of collapse. wright makes a point that there is a tendency for something to bring itself to an end, whether this is intentional or not. there is the extinction aspect, sometimes a species or group of people just can't cope with a change and they die out, like the sabre toothed tiger, as wright discusses. sabre toothed tigers survive on big game, thats why they need those big teeth to rip into the huge animals, but those teeth get in the… + read more
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Chihoe Ho
- Indigo Employee
The destructive history of 'progress'

2 years ago

A brilliant insight into what Homo sapiens have done, are doing, and will do to our environment if the terms like 'development' and 'progress' are taken out of context from the finite world of ours. Wright provides fascinating case studies of different socieites and civilizations, and explores their destructive actions to their surroundings and ultimately themselves in ways that seem so simple and obvious, yet consequential all the same. This is an interesting read, even if non-fiction is not… + read more
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Anonymous
Short but Bleak

4 years ago

A Short History of Progress is like a short version of Jarred Diamond's Collapse. This book looks at the current roads western culture is taking us in relation to technology and waste. By the end of the book the reader is left with a bit of a bleak outlook of humankind and the potential we have for destroying ourselves. Ronald Wright does leave us with a "road map" for avoiding a cultural and economic collapse, however the odds of us being able to identify and correct the threat is slim at best… + read more
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Scott B
Great Short History - Stunning Conclusion

4 years ago

Well, Mr Wright, I'll admit it, you had me... you collected superb agricultural data, and winningly merried it with 3rd party prose; your chapters were bursting with life and crime, wit and hyperbole, meaning and pettyness... but in the end, you're just a wing-nut ! It's a good thing it's not a long book, because the conclusion (ripe with useless, motherly sentiments we've all heard before) is so benign you'll (hopefully) forget there even was one in minutes, leaving you with a lasting… + read more
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Marion
Wonderful

5 years ago

This book really makes you think where we are heading as humanity into our future. It was amazingly written. + read more
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