About the Author

Fred Pearce is an award-winning former news editor at "New Scientist. "Currently its environmental and development consultant, he has also written for "Audubon, Popular Science, Time, "the "Boston Globe, "and "Natural History, "and writes a regular column for the "Guardian. "He has been honored as UK environmental journalist of the year, among his other awards. His many books include "When the Rivers Run Dry, With Speed and Violence, "and "Confessions of an Eco-Sinner." Pearce lives in England.

Reviews

Clear, accessible, and smart, this book cuts through the complexity of current population dynamics and politics to make a compelling case that we are on the brink of a low-fertility, low-mortality future in which women's equality is the main motor force of change. Pearce challenges the apocalyptic fears of overpopulation in the Third World and declining population in the West that too often dominate and distort public policy on family planning, social welfare, immigration, and the environment. This hopeful, thought-provoking book deserves to be read widely, from the corridors of power to the classroom.--Betsy Hartmann, author of "Reproductive Rights and Wrongs: The Global Politics of Population Control"

"Fearless and well-informed; every paragraph crackles. Pearce evokes past and present with vivid detail and startlingly coherent insight."--Jesse H. Ausubel, director of the Program for the Human Environment, Rockefeller University

"The population 'debate' is so fraught with the history of colonialism that no one wants to touch it. Thank goodness that Fred Pearce has had the courage to write this informative, timely, and brilliant challenge to the commonly held vision of overwhelming population growth laying waste to the earth. This book is about hope-just in the nick of time."--Maude Barlow, author of "Blue Gold: The Fight to Stop the Corporate Theft of the World's Water"

"What a wonderfully rich and humane book! As a generation of newly empowered women sweeps away our wrongheaded Malthusian nightmare, Fred Pearce demonstrates persuasively that the end of the population surge may well usher in a new era of ethnic tolerance, increased global integration, and a period of kinder and more nurturing governance."--Ross Gelbspan, author of "Boiling Point"