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Be Fruitful and Multiply
How Fertility and Innovation Have Changed Humankind and the Earth
Language:
English
Published/Copyright:
2025
About this book
A groundbreaking history that explores how human desires have affected our relationship with the natural world, and why this is a cause for hope
Donald Worster looks back over 200,000 years of Homo sapiens sapiens to show how human nature, especially the drive for food and sex, has responded to environmental conditions throughout history. Examining how this process led from foraging to the agrarian revolution and then to a capitalist way of life, Worster brings us face to face with a third transformation of human society that is beginning to take shape in China: an ecological civilization.
This meticulously researched book explores how human desires have driven us to overrun our environments, and how we have adapted by creating new relationships with the earth. Tying the past to the future and humans to the planet, Worster acknowledges that we are at a potentially dangerous tipping point. Yet he offers a surprisingly optimistic vision, full of faith in the strength of our human desires, to help us develop exciting futures in a changing world—as we have done time and again—and achieve a good life for the billions of us trying to survive on a finite planet.
Donald Worster looks back over 200,000 years of Homo sapiens sapiens to show how human nature, especially the drive for food and sex, has responded to environmental conditions throughout history. Examining how this process led from foraging to the agrarian revolution and then to a capitalist way of life, Worster brings us face to face with a third transformation of human society that is beginning to take shape in China: an ecological civilization.
This meticulously researched book explores how human desires have driven us to overrun our environments, and how we have adapted by creating new relationships with the earth. Tying the past to the future and humans to the planet, Worster acknowledges that we are at a potentially dangerous tipping point. Yet he offers a surprisingly optimistic vision, full of faith in the strength of our human desires, to help us develop exciting futures in a changing world—as we have done time and again—and achieve a good life for the billions of us trying to survive on a finite planet.
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Frontmatter
i -
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Contents
vii -
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Preface
ix -
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INTRODUCTION
1 -
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CHAPTER 1 Out of Africa
15 -
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CHAPTER 2 The Agrarian Whip
41 -
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CHAPTER 3 Humpty Dumpty and the Fate of Power
74 -
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CHAPTER 4 The Discovery of Second Earth
113 -
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CHAPTER 5 Dreams of Infinite Wealth
142 -
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CHAPTER 6 The Good Muck
164 -
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CHAPTER 7 The Empty Cradle of Hope
209 -
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CHAPTER 8 Building the Ecological Civilization
238 -
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EPILOGUE
260 -
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Notes
267 -
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Acknowledgments
297 -
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Index
299
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eBook published on:
October 7, 2025
eBook ISBN:
9780300286199
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
