One with Nineveh: Politics, Consumption, and the Human Future by Paul Ehrlich and Anne H. Ehrlich
Named a 2005 Notable Book by the American Library Association
Named one of Library Journal's Best Sci-Tech Books of 2004
"if you simply want a great book, written by smart, forthright scientists, read One with Nineveh by Paul and Anne Ehrlich. It will alternately depress and inspire you, as the authors make convincing pleas for change from the most private to the most international." -Boston Globe
Read about One with Nineveh in this New York Times Book Review essay on environment.
"One with Nineveh reads like a summing-up of the Ehrlichs' lifelong study of human ecology. . . .They pull no punches in their attacks on human hubris and greed, with especially cutting and sometimes funny words for some of our current leaders." -The San Francisco Chronicle
"...the Ehrlichs are right where it counts most: the big picture." –San Diego Union Tribune
"provocative and eminently readable...this is a direct and levelheaded presentation that should get, and deserves, wide readership." -Publishers Weekly
"The Ehrlichs have often been called the ultimate pessimists, but their book is, frankly, heartening." -Nature
"the Ehrlichs manage to be both meticulous and witty as they suggest reforms, and remind us that ours is an astoundingly adaptive species capable of making radical change once we’re motivated. So they’re doing their best to bestir us." -Booklist starred review
Paul Ehrlich is a rare kind of celebrity: his books, many of them written with partner Anne Ehrlich, have influenced a generation of readers and attracted widespread acclaim, not to mention their share of controversy.
The Ehrlichs’ latest collaboration promises to excite their fans, incense their critics, and help set the nation’s agenda in the upcoming election season and in subsequent years. One with Nineveh is a fresh synthesis of the Ehrlichs' major themes to date, informed by recent events up to and including the Iraq war, and with a provocative extra dash of politics. With unflinching clarity and directness, it exposes the three elephants in our proverbial living room--overpopulation, overconsumption, and political and economic inequity--that together are increasingly determining today's politics and shaping humankind's future. The authors demonstrate the ways these often-neglected factors influence each other, and reveal how we can begin to create a better and more lasting world if we take them seriously into account.
The book takes its title from Rudyard Kipling's "Recessional" ("Lo, all our pomp of yesterday/Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!"), and alludes to the pride that went before the fall of ancient Mesopotamian civilizations. Their undoing, beyond the impact of warfare, was deforestation and unsustainable irrigation, practices whose destructive effects were ignored by the political and econom
