A Crack in the Asphalt

Shelf Life - Selected Books and Journals

• Ronald Wright, one of this country's [Canada's] intellectual treasures... takes his readers on a sweeping educational tour of history and every continent's previous civilizations... This excellent book should be required reading at the White House. Bronwyn Drainie, Quill & Quire
• 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... Wise, timely, and brilliant. Paul William Roberts, Globe and Mail
• An elegant and learned discussion of what the rise and fall of past civilizations predict about our own: nothing good. Maclean's
• Ronald Wright draws less-than-comforting lessons about our future from our past... his arguments are compelling and necessary. Saturday Night
• Concise, urgent, and at times darkly prophetic... A Short History of Progress [is] timely, razor-sharp, grimly accurate. Dennis Choquette, The Varsity
• If you read one book about impending doom this year, make it this one. Christine Sismondo, Ottawa Citizen
• 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
• 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

posted by Gemma Grace @ 10:52 p.m.