There is so much pious nonsense about sustainability in all its guises, an area of interest replete with homilies and manifest as a trendy academic ‘industry’, that on first glance the reader might wonder if this book justifies the pithy quotation of Ambrose Bierce: ‘the covers on this book are too far apart’. Looking at the seven chapters and three appendices, with its seven figures, 11 tables, 19 boxes, 21 pages of references, and the 10-page index, the reader may then wonder if this is really a bulky vade-mecum, useful for integrating scientific understanding with socio-political and economic analyses and predictions.

In truth, the book is clearly not the work of a leading scientist. It lacks authoritative appraisal of crucial issues such as population growth, demographic developments, food and energy demands and limits, commodity demands and limits, pressures on potable water for food production and sanitation, productivity per hectare, the laws of thermodynamics as they apply to the fundamental concepts surrounding sustainability, key indicators of unsustainability, concepts of scale, risk analysis, predictive modeling including the effects of climate change etc. Indeed, it is particularly weak and deficient in most areas of science and economics. It is strong, however, on perspectives, cultural values, ideology, leadership issues, and ‘soft’ topics that often lend themselves to words rather than robust analysis and quantification; in other words, opinion can override fact.

Scientists, engineers, technologists, mathematicians, and economists will find the text useful to see how their efforts have been interpreted by others.