Ronald Wright

"Ronald Wright shows how the New World created the modern world - and how the New World now threatens to undo it all. He lifts the veil on our advanced society to reveal the deeply archaic forces that are undermining it: religious extremism, militarism, and an unshakable faith in often-dangerous ideals like endless progress, unfettered capitalism, and a universal mission." "What is America? is a passionate - and essential - look at a thoroughly puzzling, and thoroughly troubling, time."--Jacket.

In the six years since 9/11, as the bush regime has squandered domestic solidarity and international goodwill, many of the archetypes and ideals with which we’ve traditionally framed the American enterprise now seem endangered, even hollow. This raises the question, has America ever been what it thinks it is? What Is America? goes to the heart of that inquiry. Ranging with dazzling expertise through anthropology, history, and literature, Wright reconfigures our self-perception, arguing that the “essence” of America can be traced to the foundations of our history-literally to the collision of worlds that began in 1492, as one civilization subsumed another-and exploring how these currents continue to shape our world.

Palaeolithic hunters who learnt how to kill two mammoths instead of one had made progress. Those who learnt how to kill 200 by driving a whole herd over a cliff had made too much. Many of the great ruins that grace the deserts and jungles of the earth are monuments to progress traps, the headstones of civilisations which fell victim to their own success. The twentieth-century´s runaway growth has placed a murderous burden on the planet. A Short History of Progress argues that this modern predicament is as old as civilisation. Only by understanding the patterns of progress and disaster that humanity has repeated since the Stone Age can we recognise the inherent dangers, and, with luck, and wisdom, shape its outcome.

Imprisoned in a Tahitian jail while searching for her long-lost father, Liv attempts to reconstruct her troubled past and reflects upon the secret journal of her ancestor Frank Henderson, who came to Tahiti with Queen Victoria's grandchildren.

ix, 430 pages : 23 cm

"Plucked from his small fishing village and captured by the conquistadors looking to plunder the gold of Peru, young Waman is the everyman thrown into extraordinary circumstances, caught up in history's throes. He finds himself at every major moment in the empire-building of the Spanish explorers, including Francisco Pizarro, and in the culture clash and violent overthrow of the Incan leaders. He becomes an indispensable translator between the two worlds, who must learn political gamesmanship in order to survive and so that he can one day find the love of his life and be reunited with his family. Based closely on real historical events, The Gold Eaters draws on Ronald Wright's expert knowledge of sixteenth-century South America, as well as his imaginative ability to bring to life an unforgettable epoch and a world forged anew from violence and upheaval"--

En 1999, David Lambert, archéologue, s'apprête à remonter le temps dans la machine de H.G. Wells et se retrouve un demi-millénaire plus tard dans un monde dépeuplé où toute civilisation est détruite. Utilisant les méthodes d'investigation archéologique, il va tenter de comprendre l'origine de cette catastrophe et partir à la recherche d'éventuels survivants.