When it came to modern civilization, he was a pessimistic skeptic. Norberg initially found this difficult to believe himself. The world, it seems, is actually getting better. More people are successfully improving their lives, as well as the lives of their families. Disasters and crime are actually declining. Poverty and illiteracy are falling faster than any time in history. Poverty has fallen more in the past 50 years than it did in the preceding 500. What should be front-page news is that we are currently experiencing the greatest improvement in global living standards ever. According to Johan Norberg in his new book “Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future,” just the opposite is true. With the media pounding a steady beat of news about war around the world, terrorism, crime, environmental catastrophes and a sense of growing danger, isn’t the world getting worse moment by moment? Wasn’t it better in “the good old days?” With a slogan of “Make America Great Again,” to an inauguration speech that spoke of American “carnage,” Trump tapped into the seeming popular misgivings about the world today with techniques used many times in human history. Donald Trump is not the first politician to base a campaign on nostalgia for the past and fear of the future.