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 economic elites. The Ehrlichs warn that the hubris of our own civilization could be leading us to an end similar to Nineveh's--whose ruins lie near the Iraqi city of Mosul--if environmental trends such as loss of biodiversity and rapid climate change are not halted. But they also devote a large part of the book to recommending steps to allow humanity, and in particular the world's sole remaining superpower, to alter course and work toward resolving the human predicament.

Filled with bold proposals, incisive analysis, and informative scientific discussions, One with Nineveh is a wide-ranging and thought-provoking account of the major issues of our time, and what we can do about them.

Anne H. Ehrlich has been affiliated with Stanford's Department of Biological Sciences and Center for Conservation Biology, has served on the board of the Sierra Club and numerous other conservation organizations has coauthored a number of books with her husband (including Betrayal of Science and Reason), and is the recipient of many awards.

Paul R. Ehrlich has been a household name since the publication of his 1968 bestseller, The Population Bomb. He is Bing Professor of Population Studies and Professor of Biological Sciences at Stanford University. Ehrlich is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a recipient of the Crafoord Prize (an explicit substitute for the Nobel Prize in fields of science where the latter is not given), the Blue Planet Prize, and numerous other international honors.

Other books by the authors: Betrayal of Science and Reason, and Human Natures.