A Short History of Progress 

A Short History of Progress.  By Ronald Wright.  New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2005.

In some ways, this is the book that Jared Diamond should have written instead of Collapse — it’s much shorter and punchier. It doesn’t have the same sort of detail and case histories that Diamond has, but he keeps the reader’s interest with his vivid writing and the sweep of the spectacle which he depicts. 

His prevailing image is that of "progress traps" such as befell Mesopotamia and the Maya. The wrecks of our failed experiments in civilization lie scattered in deserts and jungles like crashed airliners; if we can recover the "flight recorders" we can tell what went wrong and avoid it. He also cites relatively stable civilizations such as those in Egypt and China. "The greatest wonder of the ancient world is how recent it all is. No city or monument is much more than 5,000 years old" (p. 55).

The main examples he relies on are Sumeria, Rome, the Maya, and Easter Island. He distinguishes between true collapses and political upheavals like the French and Russian revolutions — the exhaustion of social, rather than natural, capital. When nature starts to foreclose, the social contract breaks down. "Such a civilization is therefore most unstable at its peak, when it has reached maximum demand on the ecology. Unless a new source of wealth or energy appears, it has no room left to raise production or absorb the shock of natural fluctuations. The only way onward is to keep wringing new loans from nature and humanity" (p. 84). 

I’m not sure of all of his details. He says that "Rome’s ancient breadbaskets are filled with sand and dust" (p. 94). It’s true that much of North Africa has been turned to desert in the past 3000 years, but my impression was that this was due to Arab herdsmen and pastoralists who came in after the fall of Rome. There is probably some truth to the idea that Rome was weakened already through environmental damage, and perhaps Joseph Tainter underestimates the impact of the environment on Rome’s fall, but I’d like a little more detail on this point before concluding that the fall of Rome as due primarily to environmental causes.  Tainter makes a good case that inflation of Rome's currency was a key factor.  The last Roman emperor was deposed not after a dramatic battle but when he couldn't pay his troops.  

This is an excellent book.  This guy can write, so it's a quick and entertaining read.  He marshals his evidence quickly and convincingly, and the dominant image he leaves — of our civilization facing a crisis similar to that which faced other ancient civilizations — is one that simply cannot be dismissed.