This book is a sweeping global and intellectual history that radically recasts our understanding of Malthus's Essay on the Principle of Population, the most famous book on population ever written or ever likely to be. Malthus's Essay is also persistently misunderstood. First published...

Sources of population data -- Population distribution -- Urban-rural distribution -- Population growth -- Age-sex composition -- Literacy and education -- Marital status -- Economic composition -- Fertility -- Mortality and life table -- Migration -- Population theories --...