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Books like A short history of progress
A sobering, sweeping look at the ghosts of fallen empires that serves as a chilling mirror for our modern world. These 12 books are the closest matches in mood, pace and themes, with what each one shares with A short history of progress.
- sobering
- foreboding
- contemplative
- intellectually stimulating
- 01
The Rational Optimist
Matt Ridley
A sweeping, data-driven antidote to modern doom-mongering that makes you feel genuinely excited about the future of humanity.
- 02
Collapse
Jared M. Diamond · 2004
A sweeping, sobering autopsy of fallen civilizations that holds a mirror up to our own precarious future.
- 03
Why the West Rules - For Now
Ian Morris
A sweeping, God's-eye view of human history that turns millennia of data into a gripping puzzle about geography, power, and our collective future.
- 04
The collapse of complex societies
Tainter, Joseph
A rigorous, sobering exploration of how the very complexity we build to solve our problems eventually becomes the weight that crushes us.
- 05
Energy in world history
Vaclav Smil · 1994
A sweeping, deeply pragmatic lens on human history that reveals the hidden physical forces shaping our world.
- 06
Big History
Cynthia Stokes Brown · 2007
A sweeping, interdisciplinary journey that shrinks the cosmos into an accessible mosaic of deep time and human ecology.
- 07
Ideas
Peter Watson · 2005
A sweeping, panoramic journey through the evolution of human thought that leaves the reader feeling intellectually expanded and deeply connected to the past.
- 08
Enlightenment now
Steven Pinker
A sweeping, data-driven antidote to cultural pessimism that argues the world is actually getting better.
- 09
Sapiens
Yuval Noah Harari
A sweeping, paradigm-shifting journey that reveals the everyday structures of human life as nothing more than powerful, shared fictions.
- 10
The Ecology of Freedom
Murray Bookchin · 1982
A sweeping, interdisciplinary manifesto that traces the roots of human domination and charts a visionary path toward ecological liberation.
- 11
A Life on Our Planet
David Attenborough and Jonnie Hughes
A sobering but ultimately hopeful fireside chat with a beloved naturalist about the fate of our shared home.
- 12
Losing Earth
Nathaniel Rich
A gripping, infuriating historical thriller about the decade we almost saved the world, and the human flaws that stopped us.
