The United States is now the world’s lone superpower, whose deeds could make or break this century. For better and worse, America has Americanized the world. How, in a mere two centuries, did a marginal frontier society become the de facto ruler of the world? Why do America’s great achievements in democracy, prosperity, and civil rights often seem threatened by forces within itself?

Brimming with insight into history and human behaviour, and written in Wright’s captivating style, What Is America? shows how this came to pass; how the United States, which regards itself as the most modern country on earth, is also deeply archaic, a stronghold not only of religious fundamentalism but of “modern” beliefs in limitless progress and a universal mission that have fallen under suspicion elsewhere in the west, a rethinking driven by two World Wars and the reckless looting of our planet.

What Is America? peels away historical myths to show how the United States’ legacy of conquest and empire-building -from the old Indian wars to the wars of today -has shaped the modern world.

Honours

Reviews

“A devastating and brilliant critique.”
Winnipeg Free Press

“A provocative and well-argued book….Important [and] eminently worthwhile.”
David M. Shribman (Pulitzer winner), Globe and Mail

“Eloquently persuasive…An angry book with an excellent case.”
Geoff Pevere, Toronto Star

“Buoyed by its compact, fluid prose, this account is also noteworthy for its extensive footnotes, which document but also invite readers to delve deeper.”
Booklist

“Wright’s contribution feels like a voice added to a gathering zeitgeist, an accounting of past mistakes and transgressions that allows room for the possibility of better days ahead.”
Montreal Gazette

“Brilliant.”
The Walrus

Publishers in English:  Knopf Canada, Da Capo (USA), Text (Australia & NZ)
Translations:  French, Swedish, Chinese, Korean

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 A Short History of Progress –based on his acclaimed 2004 Massey Lectures — Ronald Wright argues that our modern predicament is as old as civilization, a 10,000-year experiment we have unleashed 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.

Honours

Libris Nonfiction Book of the Year Award, 2005
Book of the Year: Independent
Book of the Year: Globe and Mail
British Columbia Award for Canadian Non-Fiction finalist

Reviews

“A brilliant analysis of everything humanity has done to ruin itself down the ages.”
Jan Morris, Books of the Year, Independent on Sunday

“A compelling work of distilled wisdom… Wright is a pungent phrase-maker and a penetrating thinker. His learning is historical, anthropological and cross-cultural.”
Alex Danchev, Times Literary Supplement

“Wise, timely, and brilliant…. I don’t care if you have never read and will never read any kind of book at all, but you must read this one. [Wright] achieves in a mere 132 pages what another author couldn’t manage in 1,300.”
Paul Williams Roberts, Globe and Mail

“Provocative… Already a bestseller in Canada, Wright is now making his biggest mark since his debut novel (A Scientific Romance, 1997) attracted wide attention… illuminating and disturbing, and expansively documented.”
Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“In this short, superb essay, Wright succeeds at impressing on his readers how fragile the remarkable experiment we call civilisation really is.”
Johann Hari, The Liberal

“Wright sifts the findings of archaeology and anthropology with thoughtful grace to build a potent argument.”
Steven Poole, Guardian

“Impressive…for the evidence Wright assembles from his authoritative grasp of history, and for the skill and clarity with which he imparts information. He makes history, ecology, anthropology and political science easy to read.”
Doug Esser, Associated Press

“Ronald Wright, one of this country’s intellectual treasures… takes his readers on a sweeping educational tour of history and every continent’s previous civilization… This excellent book should be required reading at the White House.”
Brownwyn Drainie, Quill & Quire

“An elegant and learned discussion of what the rise and fall of past civilizations predict about our own: nothing good.”
Maclean’s

“Rarely have I read a book that is so gripping, so immediate and so important to our times. Jared Diamond will be jealous!”
Robyn Williams, ABC (Australia)

“A beautiful tract on the plight of humanity and how we always tend to spoil our nest and why we need to learn from that.”
Senator Bob Brown, Sydney Sun Herald

Publishers in English: Canongate (UK); Text (Australia); Anansi (Canada); Carroll & Graf (USA)
Translations: 15 languages