Every day, the human family grows by a quarter of a million people, many of them born into the very countries that can least afford to provide them with jobs, housing, and nutrition, and that are least able to prevent the environmental degradation that rapid population growth can produce.
Award-winning journalist and scholar George D. Moffett has traveled around the world to meet the people who confront the daily reality of the rising numbers - farmers in Kenya, squatters in the slums of Cairo, woman entrepreneurs in Bangladesh, relief workers, holy men, economists, diplomats. History, survey, and policy guide, Critical Masses serves to give warning but also provides a positive presecription for change.