A world after climate change and culture-shift /

This book gives readers a speculative but extensively referenced picture of what the Earth and its human populations may be like 100 years from now. Twenty international experts offer a kaleidoscopic mixture of approaches. About half the book deals with physical descriptions, maps, and graphic data on global regions: Greater Europe, North America, East and South Asia, the Middle East (including "The Projected Death of the Fertile Crescent"), and the Arctic Ocean. Especially unique are discussions about human changes: population migrations away from flooded, submerged, or desertified regions; postmodern character changes; intellectual issues raised by classical and contemporary philosophers and sociologists; examination of relationships between democracy and ecology; corruption of the public sphere; public values; and interviews with US undergraduates. Writing styles vary from factual and clear, to arcane, to witty, and also somewhat cynical. Maps depicting European nations' public attitudes through numerical keys so small as to be virtually illegible were a curious error, given the special praise provided to the publisher's editor in the acknowledgments. Editor Norwine deserves credit for engineering this assessment, but the "exceptionally American" (freewheeling) way that the book treats potentially devastating changes in the planet is somewhat discomforting. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students/faculty. F. T. Manheim George Mason University