Bet, The

Closer to a 3.5. The Bet is a long-form book about one of my favorite economic bets in history. Paul Ehrlich, doomsday economist and author of The Population Bomb, spent a significant amount of time talking about overpopulation and its impact on resources. Simon, a little-known economist who disagree......more

Here's my best shot at whittling down modern-day environmentalism to just six sentences: "People ought to respect certain natural limits if we want to maintain a happy, healthy, and productive society. We can't just pollute the air endlessly or plunder the oceans freely. The good news, though, is tha......more

A solid political and intellectual environmental history about Paul Ehrlich, Julian Simon, and the context of the bet they made. It focuses extensively on things like their biographies and presidential rhetoric around energy and conservation, with comparatively little interest in the substantive que......more

This is an interesting book ostensibly about a bet between a biologist and an economist over the earth's future, but really about the problems of extremism and the folly of prediction. I just learned about Ehrlich and Simon's best recently, as I was not yet born when it happened and child when it was......more

A good overview yet I was waiting for more science and less drama.......more