A Short History of Progress

A Short History of Progress
Authors
Wright, Ronald
Publisher
House of Anansi Press
Tags
his000000 , history , science , philosophy , sociology , politics
ISBN
9780887848438
Date
2004-01-01T00:00:00+00:00
Size
0.26 MB
Lang
en
Downloaded: 141 times

Each 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 -- 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.