Ronald Wright | |
|---|---|
 Wright speaking at the University of Alberta, 2007 | |
| Born | 1948 (age 76–77) London, United Kingdom |
| Occupation(s) | Writer, historian, novelist |
| Notable work | Stolen Continents, A Short History of Progress, What Is America? |
Ronald Wright (born 1948, London, England) is a Canadian author who has written books of travel, history and fiction. His nonfiction includes the bestsellerStolen Continents, winner of theGordon Montador Award and chosen as a book of the year byThe Independent and theSunday Times. His first novel,A Scientific Romance, won the 1997David Higham Prize for Fiction and was chosen a book of the year by theGlobe and Mail, theSunday Times, andThe New York Times.
He studied archaeology atCambridge University and later at theUniversity of Calgary, where he was awarded an honorary doctorate in 1996.
Wright has a background in archaeology, history, linguistics, anthropology and comparative culture.[1][2] He has written both fiction and non-fiction books dealing with anthropology and civilizations.
Wright was selected to give the 2004Massey Lectures. His contribution,A Short History of Progress, looks at the modern human predicament in light of the 10,000-year experiment withcivilization. In it he concludes that human civilization, to survive, would need to become environmentally sustainable, with specific reference toglobal warming andclimate change.
His second bookWhat is America?: A Short History of the New World Order continues the thread begun inA Short History of Progress by examining what Wright calls "the Columbian Age" and consequently the nature and historical origins of modern Americanimperium. Wright traces the origins of the ideas behindA Short History of Progress to the material he studied while writingA Scientific Romance and his 2000 essay forThe Globe and Mail titled "Civilization is a Pyramid Scheme" about the fall of the ninth-century Mayan civilization.[3] His bookThe Gold Eaters was a novel set during the Spanish invasion of theInca Empire in the 1520s–1540s, was published in 2015. His 1992 non-fiction bookStolen Continents was awarded the 1993 Gordon Montador Award from theWriters' Trust of Canada[4] and his 1997 novelA Scientific Romance, about a museum curator who travels into the future and investigates the fate of the human race, won theDavid Higham Prize for Fiction forfirst-time novelists. The novel,Henderson's Spear, published in 2001, was about a jailed filmmaker piecing together her family history in Polynesia.
Wright is a contributor to theTimes Literary Supplement, and has written and presented documentaries for radio and television on both sides of the Atlantic.
In 2004, Wright moved from Ontario to one of theGulf Islands inBritish Columbia.[6]
