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Book

Progress : how one idea built civilization and now threatens to destroy it

Call Number

  • 303.483 M4788 (CEN, OSH)

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Edition

First U.S. edition.

Publication Information

New York : St. Martin's Press, 2025.

Physical Description

424 pages : charts ; 25 cm.

Summary

"Progress is power. Narratives of progress, the stories we tell about whether a society is moving in the right or the wrong direction, are immensely potent. Progress has built cities, flattened mountains, charted the globe, delved the oceans and space, created wealth, opportunity, and remarkable innovation, and ushered in a new epoch unique in our planet's 4.5-billion-year history. But [the author posits that] the modern story of progress is also a very dangerous fiction. It shapes our sense of what progress means, and justifies what we will do to achieve it--no matter the cost. We continue to subscribe to a set of myths about dominion, growth, extraction, and expansion that have fueled our success, but now threaten our--and all species'--existence on a planet in crisis. ... Geographer Samuel Miller McDonald offers a radical new perspective on the myths upon which the modern world is built, illuminating its destructive lineage and suggesting an urgent alternative"--

Contents

  • What is progress?
  • Before progress. Savagery and civilization of the Ohio River Valley
  • The vital science of human ecology
  • Animism and a theory of everything
  • Joy and the meaning of nature
  • The science of hierarchy
  • 1: Heaven. Context
  • Myths of Mesopotamia
  • The ends of Zoroaster
  • The dominion of Abraham
  • The age of Athens
  • Peace of Rome
  • Kingdoms of Christ
  • Vikings of Valhalla
  • Empires of Islam
  • Coda
  • II: Nation. Context
  • Wealth of Europe
  • Histories of progress
  • Philosophies of progress
  • The forging of liberalism
  • A nation of destiny
  • The civilization of density
  • The rise of evolution
  • The fall of revolution
  • Coda
  • III: System. Context
  • The future of fascism
  • The ambivalence of modernism
  • The destiny of Nazism
  • Stability of Keynesianism
  • Cults of Stalinism-Maoism
  • The theocracy of neoliberalism
  • Heavens of tomorrow
  • Frontier of ghosts
  • Coda
  • After progress. Economies of reciprocity
  • Cities and farms of wilderness
  • Equilibria of energy
  • War of life
  • Societies of tomorrow
  • Meaning beyond progress
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • Index.

Subjects