
Member Reviews

Progress is a bold, blistering, and deeply necessary work of nonfiction that doesn’t just challenge the myth of progress—it dismantles it with precision and passion. Samuel Miller McDonald writes with the urgency of someone who’s not only done the research but feels the stakes of the world we’ve built—and where it’s headed.
From the first chapter, I was struck by how McDonald blends history, politics, environmental science, and cultural critique into a narrative that’s as engaging as it is sobering. He unpacks the roots of our obsession with growth, speed, and domination—whether over nature, people, or the future itself—and lays bare how that obsession has led us to the brink.
But this isn’t just a critique—it’s a call to reimagine. What I appreciated most was the way McDonald refuses to let cynicism win. He pushes for new ways of thinking, of being, of relating to the planet and one another. His writing is sharp and eloquent, packed with insight but never inaccessible. Every chapter felt like a conversation I didn’t know I needed to have.
If you’re interested in climate justice, systems thinking, or just ready to question the stories we’ve been sold about what it means to “move forward,” Progress is essential reading. It’s one of the smartest, most clear-eyed books I’ve read this year—and it lit a fire under me.

This book provides a critical look at "progress," something that most of us assume to be a good thing. A second look is taken at the ways progress is measured and the book explains how progress isn’t always as positive as perceived depending on the measured parameters. The book also shows how thus far in history progress has always depended on a parasitic, extractive, and expanding mode of operation. This kind of progress has culminated today with economist who assume exponential growth can continue forever on a finite earth. The book's conclusion is that we have no choice but to change future progress into a direction that is in equilibrium with the regenerative capacity of the earth.
The author tries to end the book with a note of optimism by offering an optimistic chapter titled "After Progress." The final chapter of the book it titled "Meaning Beyond Progress" in which the author explores several philosophies of life that will find meaning "in deferring the fulfillment of certain present impulses in the interest of future balance." Wise individuals arriving at such a state of mind is conceivable, but one must wonder about the widespread adoption of such thinking to achieve needed change.

While given an e-copy in exchange for an honest review, gotta say this is an overlong and America-centric criticism of a very pervasive and destructive economic, philosophical, and technological mindset that is destroying our (human) capacity to be a part of the natural world. It is quite good, and is sourced excellently and makes it easy for those that haven’t done the reading and likely won’t do the reading to have done some kind of reading. Highly rated for readability and for the ideas put forward, even if those ideas aren’t new or completely confidently stated. But this isn’t a manifesto. It’s a call to reexamine an entire civilization’s way of life. Sure. It works. For what it is. Thanks, NetGalley.