POPULATION: Growth, Change, and Impact

A superficial and belated rehash of population-bomb alarms. With such headlines as ""Teeming Billions"" and ""Belt Tightening Ahead,"" and the ubiquitous photo of Tokyo subway packers, the Stwertkas warn that world population increases are endangering our supplies of protein, grain, grazing land, trees, water, living space, and energy. Moreover, the young Third-World population is likely to be rebellious and demanding. Recent challenges to these projections aren't mentioned; approaches to conserving or redistributing the resources in question are not considered; all-important political factors are ignored (as, indeed, is the very concept of political factors); and though the Stwertkas mention the belief that better living conditions may lead to lower Third-World birth rates, the possible courses of such change are not considered. Instead the Stwertkas pad their short book with chapters on birth control methods and organizations and, less to the point, on the US census (procedures, uses, history) and ""The Right to Live."" (This chapter goes from Anne Frank and the Armenian massacre, as examples of genocide, to slavery, eugenics, and triage.) A good many juvenile titles, Laurence Pringle's books among the best of them, have treated these topics far more thoughtfully.