Atlas of World Population History

I bought my copy of this book for $4.95 in 1983 and have kept it through the years because of the striking rise in the line graphs of human population growth in various countries of the world. At the time I bought it, I had no knowledge of the concepts of overshoot and collapse of species populations, but I do now, and this little book is a startling graphic of how far we have to fall to reach any kind of equilibrium.

Close to my favorite book. Gives a thumbnail portrait of each nation's history as it explains their population changes. It puts nations, empires and cultures in crucial relative perspective ("the past is another country") and is obviously the precipitation of immense research. Lucid and succinct like his superb Atlas of (mostly) European History series which map territorial changes and to which it is a great adjunct. (I still await his promised Atlas of City History/Populations with greedy anticipation.)

The book details population changes in every region of the planet from 400 BC to 1978 AD. McEvedy and Jones used seventy line graphs and accompanying commentary text to describe population changes in seventy regions. The only negative aspect of this book is that the authors estimates of pre-European, Native American populations are considerably lower than most other estimates and seem somewhat outdated. While many books describe population changes, few cover such a huge breadth of space and time and few give so much information so directly. This book is much appreciated and other books like this would certainly be welcome. - D. Dean Marisi, Florida, 7/19/98