World Population: A Reference Handbook (Contemporary World Issues) - Hardcover

Gilbert, Geoffrey

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1576072290 ISBN 13: 9781576072295

Publisher: ABC-CLIO, 2001

Synopsis

World Population provides the resources needed to understand the economic, demographic, and environmental issues at stake on a planet rushing toward "carrying capacity."

World Population: A Reference Handbook presents the latest facts regarding population problems and issues in countries all over the world. An overview of world population highlighting terms, demographic processes, and background information leads to a tour of world population history through census counts, plagues, famines, breakthroughs in disease control and birth control, and landmark judicial decisions.

Biographies profile people who have worked to advance our understanding of world population issues or shaped population policy, such as M. S. Swaminathan, architect of India's "Green Revolution," who contributed to the expansion of the world's food supplies. A statistical chapter provides data on everything from the birth rate in Pakistan to AIDS orphans in the Caribbean, and a fascinating discussion of global trends for 2015 makes projections about world demographics, aging patterns, migration, and food.

About this title

About the Author

Geoffrey Gilbert is professor of economics and former chair of the Department of Economics at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, NY.

Reviews

These two new volumes in the "Contemporary World Issues" series share the strengths of other series volumes in being engaging, concise, and well organized. They also follow the series' structure by providing an introduction/overview, a chronology, biographical sketches, statistics and graphs, a directory of organizations, and selected print, nonprint, and web resources. Among other highlights, Gilbert (economics, Hobart and William Smith Coll.) tracks population growth from Neolithic times to the present and offers long-term growth projections, while Stebbins, a librarian at Brandeis University with a special interest in work-family issues, provides landmark legal decisions. Far from spoon-feeding undergraduates, these titles challenge the student researcher to consider the international and historical scope of the two topic areas. Of particular value are the abstracts for the selected monographs in the resources section, which not only motivate student interest in the book described and the topic itself but will prove useful for collection development. In general, the series could be improved by the addition of recommendations for online databases to search for each topic, perhaps including the authorized subject headings for the topic. Paula R. Dempsey, DePaul Univ., Chicago
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From the Contemporary World Issues series, which the publisher intends as "a good starting point for research by high school and college students, scholars, and general readers, as well as by legislators, businesspeople, activists, and others." RBB
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: ABC-CLIO
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1576072290
• ISBN 13: 9781576072295
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 238