A Short History of ProgressEach time history repeats itself, so it's said, the price goes up. The twentieth century was a time of runaway growth in human population, consumption, and technology, placing a colossal load on all natural systems, especially earth, air, and water Ñ the very elements of life. The most urgent questions of the twenty-first century are: where will this growth lead? can it be consolidated or sustained? and what kind of world is our present bequeathing to our future?In his #1 bestseller A Short History of Progress Ronald Wright argues that our modern predicament is as old as civilization, a 10,000-year experiment we have participated in but seldom controlled. Only by understanding the patterns of triumph 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. |
Contents
Gauguins Questions | 1 |
The Great Experiment | 29 |
Fools Paradise | 55 |
Pyramid Schemes | 81 |
The Rebellion of the Tools | 107 |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
Africa Alfred Crosby America Ancient Maya animals apes Archaeology Aztec Bahn became began Cambridge capital Çatal Hüyük century A.D. China cities Classic climate collapse Complex Societies Conquest Cro-Magnons crops Crosby culture developed Early Civilizations earth Easter Island Ecological Egypt Empire environment Europe European extinction famine farming Fertile Gauguin Gilgamesh Green History Guatemala half Harmondsworth hectares Homo Homo erectus Human Impact hunters Ibid Ice Age Inca Inca Empire Indian invented irrigation jungle killed land Last Neanderthal later lived London maize mankind Mesoamerica Mesopotamia Mexico Middle East million modern humans natural Neanderthal Neolithic North Old Stone Age past Penguin Peru plants Ponting population Prehistory progress pyramid Revolution Rigoberta Menchú Roman Rome Ronald Wright Scientific Romance social Spanish species square kilometres Sumer Sumerian Tainter Tattersall Thames and Hudson Tikal tion Tiwanaku Toronto University Press Upper Palaeolithic Uruk weapons wheat wild wrote York