The Human Tide

How Population Shaped the Modern World

By: Paul Morland

Narrated by: Zeb Soanes

Length: 10 hrs and 40 mins

Publisher's Summary

A dazzling new history of the modern world, as told through the remarkable story of population change.

Every phase since the advent of the industrial revolution - from the fate of the British Empire, to the global challenges from Germany, Japan and Russia, to America's emergence as a sole superpower, to the Arab Spring, to the long-term decline of economic growth that started with Japan and has now spread to Europe, to China's meteoric economy, to Brexit and the presidency of Donald Trump - can be explained better when we appreciate the meaning of demographic change across the world. The Human Tide is the first popular history book to redress the underestimated influence of population as a crucial factor in almost all of the major global shifts and events of the last two centuries - revealing how such events are connected by the invisible mutually catalysing forces of population.

This highly original history offers a brilliant and simple unifying theory for our understanding the last 200 years: the power of sheer numbers. An ambitious, original, magisterial history of modernity, it taps in to prominent preoccupations of our day and will transform our perception of history for many years to come.

©2019 Paul Morland (P)2019 Hodder & Stoughton Limited

Critic Reviews

"Superbly explained." (Washington Post)

perfect

simply the best non fiction book I have read it in 20 years. an eye-opener,a pleaser, and a genuinely positive aura.

Superb

Great narrator, interesting subject and a tone best described as humorous nihilistic optimism! Great book!

fascinating but....

I am half way through this book. Full of great stuff BUT Zeb reads it like a continuity announcer, his sentences rising and falling as if to bring forward the next instalment. I may not get to the end because of it. If it wasnt so interesting I would have jacked it after chapter 1.

Brilliant

This is a brilliant book which explains so much, without really banging its own drum. The author is quite modest about how much demographics explains about the whole if human history. Really it explains a lot, and the near future is pretty much mapped out in terms of likely trends. The format of the book is to go round the world country by country and explain how the same patterns repeat themselves again and again across the centuries and the continents. We're all individuals but together we act in very predictable ways.

Intriguing and impeccably read

Some very thought provoking arguments - read in the tones of a BBC radio presenter. Well worth a listen, but perhaps also read the books on why history is governed by geography!