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Growing up as the fifth of six kids, I never saw any special virtue in small families. Back then, at the tail end of the baby boom, apparently no one else did either. So perhaps it was no wonder that Paul Ehrlich caused such a commotion when, in 1968, he tossed The Population Bomb into the world’s emerging environmental conscience. Written in just a few weeks, the book sold in the millions. Ehrlich’s forceful and confident arguments, and his authority as a Stanford biologist, compelled attention. But the real punch was the upcoming catastrophe, described even in the first line: “The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s the world will undergo famines – hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.” ...