A Short History of Progress

by RonaldWright (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  2005

  $6.94

  Albert Einstein called progress 'the axe in the hand of the pathological criminal', and in this timely book Ronald Wright shows how the twentieth century's runaway growth in human population, consumption, and technology have placed a murderous burden on the planet. Asking where this growth lead, whether it can be consolidated or sustained and what kind of world the present bequeathing to the future, he argues that our modern predicament is as old as civilisation, 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 since the Stone Age can we recognise the experiment's inherent dangers, and, with luck and wisdom, shape its outcome.

• Used

  Paperback
  2006

  $3.55

  Palaeolithic hunters who learnt how to kill two mammoths instead of one had made progress. Those who learnt how to kill 200 by driving a whole herd over a cliff had made too much. Many of the great ruins that grace the deserts and jungles of the earth are monuments to progress traps, the headstones of civilisations which fell victim to their own success. The twentieth-century's runaway growth has placed a murderous burden on the planet. A Short History of Progress argues that this modern predicament is as old as civilisation. Only by understanding the patterns of progress and disaster that humanity has repeated since the Stone Age can we recognise the inherent dangers, and, with luck, and wisdom, shape its outcome.

• New

  Paperback
  2006

  $11.66

  Palaeolithic hunters who learnt how to kill two mammoths instead of one had made progress. Those who learnt how to kill 200 by driving a whole herd over a cliff had made too much. Many of the great ruins that grace the deserts and jungles of the earth are monuments to progress traps, the headstones of civilisations which fell victim to their own success. The twentieth-century's runaway growth has placed a murderous burden on the planet. A Short History of Progress argues that this modern predicament is as old as civilisation. Only by understanding the patterns of progress and disaster that humanity has repeated since the Stone Age can we recognise the inherent dangers, and, with luck, and wisdom, shape its outcome.