Rather than cast backward-looking stones, leaders in this space should reflect on how far we have come, and start defining the future we are working so hard to build.
This one, released under his own name (but conceived with Walsh), is a more straightforward affair that casts backward glances over a long and prolific career.
But this was a game that Tottenham needed to win and only a fourth point from an available 12 had them casting backward glances.
As the curtain descended, and the cast walked backward, our hapless narrator fell.
In Un Homme de passage, Serge Doubrovsky cast a backward glance at his life's path and reflected on the women who accompanied him.
The result is an authoritative, amply footnoted yet brisk account not only of her life but also of its rich backdrop, featuring a cast extending backward through almost three centuries of the Ptolemaic dynasty.
Everything else including terrorism, war, political polarization, environmental anxiety and an economic bubble whose bursting cast a backward pall over the era's extravagance, much as 9/11 seems to shadow even those pictures conceived and released before the attacks.
As the rain fell like the grumble of a malcontent across west London this week, Tim Richards, chief executive of the Vue cinema chain, must have cast a backward glance at his former life in Hollywood, where he was a Warner Bros executive with an open invitation to starry parties.
Graham is now among a cast of backward-thinking presidential candidates taking aim at the amendment as a tactic to devalue the rights of immigrants of color and dehumanize aspiring Americans.
The high-level panel appointed by the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, to draw up a post-2015 development agenda might well be casting envious backward glances at the small team that drafted the millennium development goals (MDGs).
