A Short History of Progress | Ronald Wright | Absolutely well-written and thought-provoking

A Short History of Progress | Ronald Wright | Essential reading.

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A Short History of...

	A Short History of Progress Ronald Wright Da Capo Press, 2005 - 224 pages average customer review:based on 36 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Each time history repeats itself, the cost goes up. The twentieth century?a time of unprecedented progress?has produced a tremendous strain on the very elements that comprise life itself: This raises the key question of the twenty-first century: How much longer can this go on? With wit and erudition, Ronald Wright lays out a-convincing case that history has always provided an answer, whether we care to notice or not. From Neanderthal man to the Sumerians to the Roman Empire, A Short History of Progress dissects the cyclical nature of humanity's development and demise, the 10,000-year old experiment that we've unleashed but have yet to control. It is Wright's contention that only by understanding and ultimately breaking from the patterns of progress and disaster that humanity has repeated around the world since the Stone Age can we avoid the onset of a new Dark Age. Wright illustrates how various cultures throughout history have literally manufactured their own end by producing an overabundance of innovation and stripping bare the very elements that allowed them to initially advance. Wright's book is brilliant; a fascinating rumination on the hubris at the heart of human development and the pitfalls we still may have time to avoid.

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Absolutely well-written and thought-provoking

This is a really interesting book that briefly talks about the rise and fall of civilizations, the factors that leads to their collapse. At the end of each sections, the author poses questions to ponder. Why this happened and what caused that to happen. In very fine easy-going language, the author tours the whole history of mankind and raises philosophical questions about the directions of our present state. He starts with Paul Gauguin's questions, but these are time-immemorial questions asked by many others from antiquity, and then attempts to answer them from the lessons that we learned from past histories. This book compels one to do philosophical soul-searching in the light of history of civilizations and its repititive patterns.

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Essential reading.

This book covers the same material as Jared Diamond's COLLAPSE in less than a quarter of the pages; and it's much better written.

intresting

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 way if they were hunting say a rabbit, so as big game died out so did they. but the other kind of extinction, the one more relevant to us today, us being the leading countries with the power to carry out wright's fears, is very much intentional. an example from wright explaining this is the easter islanders... there were a few but i like this one best because it makes it more real for me as i live in suburbia. the easter islanders cut down all the trees on their island and because of that went extinct. that sounds kind of ridiculous to us, but we're doing the exact same things today. wright calls these progress traps and examples would be farming and neuclear weapons. we have become so dependent on farming and use that solely to produce food that if the climate were to change we'd be in something of a pickle.. and i'd assume you can guess how neuclear weapons would hinder the progress of the human species. wright brings our attention to our possible demise by our own hand. a decent quote is "the most compelling reason for reforming our system is that the system is in no one's interest. It is a suicide machine".

it's not so much a history book as it is a call to attention. it uses history to explain the theories it proposes, because history is all we have, but it is not an all encompassing guide to the progress of humanity throughout time. i thought it was a pretty good book, readable.

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History of Progress

This book is a great read for leisure, not only does it give you a basic history lesson, it also leads you to every civilizations' end. If you enjoy reading about how cultures and civilization grow, and how their people slowly destroys themselves, this is a must read.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

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