Earth

This beautifully produced large-format book is a work of urgent and inspired ecoevangelisma volume whose text and pictures warn that Western technological civilization is ravaging Earth's finite resources while the world's burgeoning population spells disaster unless controls are implemented quickly. The Ehrlichs, currently at Stanford University, are esteemed biological scientists, and Paul Ehrlich is remembered for The Population Bomb and The End of Affluence. Here, underpinned by scientific, social and political facts and insights that cohere with undeniable power, is the long-familiar Earth-celebrating message of such groups as the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth et al. Richly and with authority, the Ehrlichs trace humans' progressively destructive use of nonrenewable energy resources into our own age of acid rain and deforestation, and spell out our choices as we face a ""bang or whimper'' end. Even women's liberation falls into their purview as a key to population control. Photos. Major ad/promo. (April 6)