The first major study of population size and its tremendous importance to the character and quality of society, this classic examines the tendency of human numbers to outstrip their resources.

Malthus' life's work on human population and its dependency on food production and the environment was highly controversial on publication in 1798. He predicted what is known as the Malthusian catastrophe, in which humans would disregard the limits of natural resources and the world would be plagued by famine and disease. He significantly influenced the thinking of Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace and his theories continue to raise important questions today in the fields of social theory, economics and the environment. With an introduction by Robert Mayhew.

This is a fascinating insight into the work of one of our greatest thinkers. Thomas Robert Malthus (1766–1834) is best remembered today for his theories on the menace of over-population; this first ever full-length biography shows him also in his role as one of the founders of classical political economy, still a controversial figure in the history of economic thought. Based on exhaustive research among contemporary sources, it gives an account of Malthus’s two careers, as an economist and as a professor at the East India College. Patricia James describes how, at the East India College, Malthus was influential in the establishment of an incorruptible Civil Service and the modern system of written examinations, in circumstances which seem almost farcical today. She gives an account of his family and social life, which was full of warmth and variety, with an abundance of ‘characters’ as well as many famous men. People nowadays are inclined to argue in a vacuum whether Malthus is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ about population outrunning subsistence, and about the adequacy of aggregate demand in a capitalist society. Patricia James shows him in his historical setting, so that the book is a study both of the man and of the age in which he lived. She believes that, paradoxically, if we view Malthus’s works as the period pieces they are, it becomes more and not less easy to see their relevance to our own problems. Although Malthus’s search for basic principles in a changing world was confused and erratic, his ideas are still illuminating to those who prefer investigation and reappraisal to the mere reiteration of dogma. This text was first published in 1975.

Although Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) is often cited as the founding text of the U.S. environmental movement, in The Malthusian Moment Thomas Robertson locates the origins of modern American environmentalism in twentieth-century adaptations of Thomas Malthus’s concerns about population growth. For many environmentalists, managing population growth became the key to unlocking the most intractable problems facing Americans after World War II—everything from war and the spread of communism overseas to poverty, race riots, and suburban sprawl at home. Weaving together the international and the domestic in creative new ways, The Malthusian Moment charts the explosion of Malthusian thinking in the United States from World War I to Earth Day 1970, then traces the just-as-surprising decline in concern beginning in the mid-1970s. In addition to offering an unconventional look at World War II and the Cold War through a balanced study of the environmental movement’s most contentious theory, the book sheds new light on some of the big stories of postwar American life: the rise of consumption, the growth of the federal government, urban and suburban problems, the civil rights and women’s movements, the role of scientists in a democracy, new attitudes about sex and sexuality, and the emergence of the “New Right.”

On the bicentennial of Malthus' legendary essay on the tendency of population to grow more rapidly than the food supply, this book examines the impacts of population growth on 19 global resources and services, including food, fresh water, fisheries, jobs, education, income and health. Despite current hype of a 'birth dearth' in parts of Europe and Japan, the fact remains that human numbers are projected to increase by over 3 billion by 2050. Populations in rapidly growing nations are in danger of outstripping the carrying capacity of their natural support systems and governments in such situations will find it increasingly hard to respond to crises such as AIDS, food and water shortages and mass unemployment. Beyond Malthus examines methods such as the expansion of international family planning, investment in educating young people in the developing world and promotion of a shift towards smaller families which will represent the most humane response to the possible ravages of the population explosion.

Though Robert Malthus has never disappeared, he has been perpetually misunderstood. Robert Mayhew offers at once a major reassessment of Malthus’s ideas and an intellectual history of the origins of modern debates about demography, resources, and the environment, giving historical depth to our current planetary concerns.