Progress: A History of Humanity's Worst Idea

by Samuel Miller McDonald

ISBN: 9780008462482

Published: 2025-08-13

'This is a wise book, and hopefully its wisdom will rub off' Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature 'Progress upturns shibboleths. Without new understandings of our past, such as that given here, chaos may be inevitable' Danny Dorling, author of Inequality and the 1% Progress is power. But the modern story of progress is a very dangerous fiction. In the pursuit of progress, of growth and expansion, we have levelled cities, flattened mountains, charted the globe and ushered in a new geological epoch unique in our planet's 4.5-billion-year history. The idea of progress has compelled societies toward exploration, invention, and grandiosity on one hand, and on the other, genocide, slavery, ecocide, and conquest: it is the root of our civilization's success, as well as its looming demise. Geographer Samuel Miller McDonald offers a radical new perspective on the myth upon which the modern world is built, illuminating its blood-strewn lineage and suggesting an urgent alternative. He...