Gweilo: Memories of a Hong Kong Childhood

Book Description

Evocative, funny and full of life, this is a beautifully observed childhood memoir of growing up in colonial Hong Kong in the 1950s.

As an inquisitive seven-year-old, Martin Booth found himself with the whole of Hong Kong at his feet when his father was posted there in the early 1950s. Unrestricted by parental control, he had free access to hidden corners of the colony normally closed to a Gweilo, a “pale fellow” like him. Befriending rickshaw coolies and local stallholders, he learned Cantonese, sampled delicacies such as boiled water beetles and one-hundred-year-old eggs, and participated in colourful festivals. He even entered the forbidden Kowloon Walled City, wandered into the secret lair of the Triads and visited an opium den. Along the way he encountered a colourful array of people, from the plink plonk man with his dancing monkey to Nagasaki Jim, a drunken child molester, and the Queen of Kowloon, the crazed tramp who may have been a member of the Romanov family.

Shadowed by the unhappiness of his warring parents, a broad-minded mother who, like her son, was keen to embrace all things Chinese, and a bigoted father who was enraged by his family’s interest in “going native,” Martin Booth’s compelling memoir is a journey into Chinese culture and an extinct colonial way of life that glows with infectious curiosity and humour.

Customer Reviews:

Wonderful memoir.......2006-10-23

I can testify to both the charm and (indirectly) authenticity of this memoir.

A HK-born Chinese friend and his American-born American wife both tremendously enjoyed this book. He is of the right age to have had an overlapping childhood in Hong Kong with the author. His wife exclaims "I love reading the stories in this book. It is so much my husband! It's like everything he's told me about his enchanted childhood in Hong Kong!"

To which her Chinese husband replies, grumpily: "But it is about a Gweilo! How can that be *me* and my childhood!??!"

So this book not only tells a Gweilo story, but tells a Hong Kong story as well.

A charming walk down memory lane..........2006-08-27

The time period described by Booth easily predates my own childhood by a full decade, but the many scenarios and experiences described in the book closely match those of my own. This is not at all surprising since post-war Hong Kong progressed relatively slowly in the 50's and 60's. It was not until the go-go 70's that the former British colony truly embarked on a rapid metamorphosis into its current cosmopolitan character.

Booth wrote with great clarity and pacing. Even though it should be classified as an autobiography, the book reads more like an adventure. Beneath the fast paced tale though, lies a sensitive sub-plot of his familial struggle. There was of course the constant bickering between his "stick in the mud" alcoholic father and his pleasant and worldly mother, a woman learned beyond her level of education. More importantly, there was the alienation and the widening gap between himself and his father which apparently never narrowed beyond the scope of the book.

The charm of this book lies in the fact that Booth was able to present it in a child's perspective with its combination of pre-pubescent innocence, naivete, wit and fun-loving mischievousness. What shines through even more is the author's love of people and "joie de vivre". Even though he was a "gweilo" (a Caucasian foreigner), he clearly loved the natives (of Hong Kong), considered himself one and acted accordingly. For those of us who grew up in that bygone era in Hong Kong, the book would certainly unleash a flood of memories heretofore tucked away in the deep recesses of our minds; for others, the book would no doubt offer an authentic glimpse into a romantic, colourful and sometimes bittersweet era of old Hong Kong.

Great book, but lay off poor Dad!.......2006-06-26

I liked this book a lot, but agree with Mr. McFarland. Booth Senior just did his sodding best to protect his family in an unfamiliar land. Sure, the scene in which Booth Senior forces his son to help him wash his car is hilarious since Booth Senior doesn't seem to realize he's doing so in a typhoon's "eye", but give Dad a break. My Dad could also be unreasonable. As a Dad, I could be WAY unreasonable; I once tried to make my Yi number one son sort my CDs by composer chronologically and did not realize that at the age of 10 he could hardly be expected to know how to do this.

It is in other words ironic that Western Sinophiles like Booth and Booth Mater should so ooh and so aah over "China", at least until they meet their first squat toilet and even after emerging from the Asiatic loo: yet not somehow see that "China" is a patriarchal construct all the way down to foundations of beaten earth sealed in the blood of women and children who did not Obey.

I was expecting a search for a way to forgive dear old Dad as the keystone of the book but found none.

Master Kong Fu-Zi Confucius was a wise psychologist, for in forgiving Dad one accepts oneself, especially when one finds oneself washing one's bloody car in the eye of a bloody typhoon, or madly searching for one's bloody car keys, or with a big behind at the bloody beach. Master Kong said, honor thy father when he is alive, and grieve for him when he is dead.

Thumbs up from a "local".......2006-05-16

Although I've been living in the States for years now, I am a Hong Kong "local" who grew up not too far away from the Fourseas Hotel where young Booth began his adventures in Hong Kong. Booth's memoir brought me right back to Hong Kong, as if I could see the foggy harbor, smell the joss sticks burning in a temple and hear the chatter from busy dai-pai-dongs. Booth's description of Hong Kong is so vivid and lively that I felt I was right there with him roaming all over Kowloon and the Peak. The way Booth intertwined the story with his adventures in Hong Kong and his parents strained marriage makes the book a very interesting read. I can feel Booth's love for Hong Kong throughout his writing, and as a local, I'm proud to know that a Gweilo loves my hometown as much as I do.

For the curious folks out there, I checked with my Dad, who informed me that the Fourseas Hotel was remodeled into a bowling alley, and then got torn down and rebuilt as another hotel which is still in operation nowadays, called The Metropole. "Coronation Road" mentioned in the book has been renamed "Nathan Road", the hill behind Fourseas with the refugee squatters is present-day residential area "Ho Man Tin", dai-pai-dongs are still gourmet of street food, and no, people don't eat dogs anymore (I believe it's illegal), but yes, snake is still a wintertime favourite!

I highly recommend this book!

Growing up in Hong Kong.......2006-03-20

For an excellent review of the same book, albeit under the name of "Golden Boy: Memories of a Hong Kong Childhood" and at a higher price than 'Gweilo' (it's the same book) see the review by Lynn Harnett.

It was a pleasure for me to read Martin Booth's childhood memories while sitting in far-away arid and cold Denver, Colorado and through Martin's detailed descriptions to relive my own colorful childhood in humid Hong Kong in the 60ies and 70ies. Although I was the protagonist's age about 20 years after Martin, did not have the 'lucky' golden hair but 'uninteresting' auburn hair that the locals did not touch for good luck, and as a girl did not have Martin's freedom to roam around alone, his book evoked many similar memories. Growing up 20 years after Martin provided some detachment and distance from dead Japanese soldiers, and by the '60ies water shortages made us fill the bathtubs and every empty receptacle with water rather than soap up at the beach. Little Martin's description of Hong Kong and Chinese culture is insightful and accurate. Martin's children are most fortunate to have been left such a vivid, detailed and succinct memoir of Martin's early childhood and I hope their experience of their father was a far more positive one than Martin's experience with his father. I hope for Martin's father's sake that the old man was not as narrow-minded, insecure and unjust as he was portrayed in the book; on the other hand the man's meanness and pettiness made for some pretty amusing reading. His mother's positive and helpful demeanor and openness to absorbing a new culture was a very refreshing contrast to the father's dullness. The tone between the parents and the mother's affection for the son is set on the journey to Hong Kong - dad shares a cabin with another man while mom shares her cabin with her only child.

I strongly recommend this book to
1. anyone who wishes to gain a better understanding of Hong Kong in the 50ies
2. anyone who would like a better understanding of how an intelligent, intellectually curious 7 to 10 year old perceives a new culture and his own parent's farcical marriage.

As stated before, for more on the contents of book see the review of Golden Boy by Harnett - or just read the book.

Customer Reviews:

Amazing, Intresting and joy to read.......2007-06-27

A very deatailed, yet enjoyable to read, book covering the genesys, evolution and variants of one of the most known (but least covered) aeronautical icons.

If you want to find out anecdotes and war stories of one of the most devastating (in terms of firepower deployed) warbirds of WWII. Read this book

Amazon.com

In Shooting at the Moon, Roger Warner chronicles a covert operation that used Hmong villagers as guerrilla fighters against the North during the Vietnamese War. Thought to be an expendable resource by Central Intelligence Agency strategists, the Hmong died by the thousands fighting the North Vietnamese. Those who survived were abandoned to their fate when the United States pulled out of the war. Warner's history is the moving and tragic story of how America's "secret war" devastated its own allies in Southeast Asia.

Book Description

THE CIA IN ITS GLORY DAYS and the mad confidence that led to disaster in Vietnam are the subjects of Roger Warner's prizewinning history, Shooting at the Moon: The CIA's War in Laos (first published as Back Fire, Simon & Schuster, 1995). For a few years in the early 1960s the CIA seemed to be running a perfect covert war in Laos - quiet, inexpensive, just enough arms to help Meo tribesmen defend their home territory from the Communist Pathet Lao. Then the big American war next door in Vietnam spilled across the border. How the perfect covert war ballooned into sorrow and disaster is the story Roger Warner tell in Shooting at the Moon, awarded the Cornelius Ryan Award for 1995's Best Book on Foreign Affairs by the Overseas Press Club.

Warner describes his characters with a novelist's touch - soldiers and diplomats busy with war-making; CIA field officers from bareknuckle warriors to the quiet men pulling strings in the shadows; and above all the Meo as they realized they had been led down the garden path.

This is a book about war, about secrecy, and its illusions, about the cruel sacrifice of small countries for the convenience of large ones. Nothing better has been written about the CIA in the years when it thought a handful of Americans in sunglasses could do anything with planeloads of arms and money to burn.

Customer Reviews:

The Laos war from an american perspective.......2006-01-09

Shooting at the Moon is a book covering the US military war in Laos. Though some information is passed upon the war in Vietnam or Cambodia, the details are few and only mentioned when having an impact on the Laos war. Good descriptions are made on all the main characters involved and the war is covered both on the washington perspective and on the agents on the field. Only the effects on the civilian population is missing. A short summary is done on what happened after the war, on the further destinies on the peoples involved, on Laos and the refugees in Thailand. No real mention is done about the royalist puppet government of the US, other than a futile attempt to forbid US to do massive bombing flights. There is barely any mention on US activities apart from the military, such as factfinding, espionage and interrogation techniques.

Writing: 5/5

The book is an enjoyable read, well written with an easy to understand chronology. It is written not as an ordinary fact book, but more as a story about the americans involved in the secret wars of Laos. There are few direct quotes and the footnotes hardly points out which facts are received from whom. This is understandable, as many of the sources to the book are still working for CIA and don't want their names tied to some given fact. The the war in Laos is still a touchy subject. You get a feeling of all the main characters in the book, understanding why they took the decisions they did. Also, you get emotionally involved with the american allies in Laos, the Hmong people (in the book known as Meo), how they are used in the war and ultimately betrayed

as the US sees bigger gains to be had by abandoning the people that have been fighting for them.

Facts: 4/5

There is no doubt that this book has been well researched. There is a wealth of information on the persons involved, the most important events, which types of weapons were used, the strategies involved and on all things military. The problems comes

mostly when the author alleges things that aren't directly connected to the Laos wars. At one place he tells us that the CIA has never been involved in drug dealing, even if that has thoroughly documented in books like Alfred W. McCoys The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade, Afghanistan, Southeast Asia, Central America, Columbia. He states that the US had little to with when in 1965, the military regime of Indonesia slaughtered 300 000 indonesians, even though CIA was largely involved in the overthrow of the left-wing government of Sukarno, compiling lists of dissidents and turning them over to the right-wing generals. At another time, the author chides the CIA:s excessive caution regarding the bloody regime of Pol Pot in Cambodia, but never mentions that the US supported the Khmer Rogue regime with food and medicines to be used as a buffer against the Vietnamese. These are details, but as all these details show a will to hide the dirtier side of the CIA war, one wonders what else has been missed in the book.

Balance: 3/5

This is a book purely from an american perspective, although their Hmong allies are covered quite well. No greater depth goes into anyone fighting on the enemy side, no commanders are mentioned and the civilians (apart from the Hmong) aren't mentioned more than perhaps 2-3 times. This onesidedness are displayed directly in the first chapter describing a coupe in 1960 against the american backed royalist government in favour for a more neutral government, somewhere between the americans and the vietnamese. No where is it mentioned that this was in fact a counter coupe to when general Phoumi, with US help, rigged the ballots in 1958 to throw out the 21 leftist candidates from the national assemby.

However, this bias is moslty in the selection of what to cover. No moral perspective is given on the use of Napalm, or bombing Laos with the equivalent of 25 Hiroshima bombs, as no moral judgement is passed on the vietnames disregard of peace treaties and borders. While the vietnamese recruiting to the army is called 'brainwashing', the Hmong side 'hard recruitment methods' are also mentioned. What is more suprising is when the author names the CIA officers involved as 'descent people', even though one of them collects the ears from dead enemies and thinks that the marines should be sent against antiwar protesters instead of national guard 'because the marines shot better' and another officer thinks that Vietnam, the country they suppousedly are helping, should be bombed into the stoneage.

The faults mentioned above do not, however, deduct from the generally good experience when reading the book, and the story is genuinely fascinating. I recommend everyone to read this book. One should complement this book with some on the rest of the vietnam war, mostly regarding the effects of the weapons used on the population, as those parts are severly lacking form this book.

The most amazing war story that's never been told.......2005-12-11

Warner's history of the Laotian conflict from 1960-1975 is an amazing story of a secret war run by secret agents working for a secret agency.

Hidden behind the Vietnam War, the author reveals facts about the "secret war" that was even more critical than Vietnam at top levels of government. This book will change your understanding of modern Southeast Asian history and the magnitude of the challenges the United States faced.

What makes this book engaging, and at times absolutely riveting, is that Warner gained full access to the hidden CIA operative, Mr. William Lair, who laid the foundation for this secret American paramilitary campaign.

December 7th, 1941 is the day Lair's life changed forever. He was a 17 year old student at Texas A&M University when America was attacked. He convinced his mother to allow her only son to join the army so he could defend the ideals he grew up with in America's heartland.

He landed on Omaha Beach in Normandy with the 3rd Armored Division and fought his way to the Elbe River. There, he came face to face with Stalin's troops. He and many of his partners in arms realized that the next war, with a more fearsome enemy, had already begun. Communism was about to become a rising tide that would cover nearly half the planet.

After the war, Lair returned to Texas A&M and completed his degree. A new government agency formed less than three years earlier was on campus interviewing. Lair and his friends had never heard of it. It was called the CIA. He signed up.

In March, 1951, the CIA sent Lair to Bangkok on a seemingly impossible mission reminiscent of the opening scene of Apocalypse Now.

Lair's first and only mission was to fight communist insurgency in Thailand and in surrounding countries. He would travel, alone, to a third world nation with few English speaking people. Once there, he must organize a cadre of local fighters by any means necessary and train them in guerilla warfare. The budget was slim. Some surplus WWII weapons were available.

Lair took the job and Warner takes us on his incredible adventure.

Warner paints a fair picture of the background, situations and players in the Laotian conflict. His individual portraits ring true but the characters worthy of respect in the book are few and far between.

The "secret war" was filled with bungling bureaucrats, deceptive diplomats, corrupt businessmen, Asian warlords, greedy opportunists and loose cannons. Warner's history of the Laos conflict accurately reads like a train that's out of control. Some mistakes seem obvious but it's hard to see exactly which things could have been done differently to shift the outcomes.

Lair, a quiet, soft spoken man, rises to his challenge to become an American Lawrence of Arabia. He raises a 30,000 man secret army of Laotian and Thai fighters that actually stops the communist war machine. Until decisions at high levels of government in the Soviet Union, Vietnam, China and the United States changed the course of history and the outcome.

Despite the fact that this war ended 30 years ago, Lair's methodology for fighting foreign conflicts holds great potential for America, even in 2005.

This book is a front row seat to an epic conflict that was all but invisible to the American public. Lair is a hidden American hero whose actions will earn your respect.

The Secret War in Laos .......2005-11-23

While the Vietnam war was played out on your television screens a related war in neighboring Laos took place outside the line of vision of most Americans. It was a different kind of war. In Vietnam hundreds of thousands of American soldiers tried to hold ground and kill the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese troops. In Laos, a few American civilians working mostly for the CIA helped the Hmong hill people fight a guerilla war against the North Vietnamese. The ragtag forces of the Hmong kept three top-notch North Vietnamese divisions tied down in Laos for more than a decade.

This unconventional war attracted unconventional people. Chief among them was Vang Pao, the charismatic Hmong general, who ranks with Massoud in Afghanistan as a genius in conducting a war on the cheap against a larger and better-armed force. The Americans helping the Hmong were a colorful lot. First and foremost was Bill Lair, the quiet, competent agent who organized the Hmong forces. Then, "Pop" Buell a middle aged Indiana farmer who came to Laos as an agricultural advisor making $75 per month and became a key figure in the war. Jerry "Hog" Daniels, a swashbucking Montana smokejumper was Vang Pao's trusted CIA case officer. Many other characters of rare quality dot the pages of this book. Laos in the 1960s and 1970s was a war that appealed to those who didn't fit into the conventional military mold.

"Shooting at the Moon" is the definitive account of the secret war in Laos which ended with the withdrawal of the US -- and some would say the abandonment of the Hmong --in 1975 and the flight of tens of thousands of them to Thailand, and subsequently to the United States. This is one of the essential books on the Indochinese conflict. "Shooting at the Moon" has also been published under the title "Backfire."

Smallchief

This Title Also Known as "Back Fire".......2004-06-04

Roger Warner has published the only comprehensive, unbiased account of the strange but tragic "sideshow" war in Laos, the mountainous, landlocked neighbour of Vietnam that was consumed in the same domino-theory meltdown as the two Vietnams and Cambodia, but which was assiduously kept out of the media's scrutiny for most of the 1960s. The sporadic war between the American-sponsored tribesmen and the communist Pathet Lao was wholly financed, on the American side, through the CIA, with unofficial air support from the USAF (traveling incognito) and private CIA front airline. Warner tells the story from several angles, including the zealous mid-western missionaries who traveled to Laos in the early 1960s to help improve agriculture, the often equally idealistic CIA field operatives who trained the tribesmen and the less saintly backroom boys in Washington who made sure Congress kept giving the money. He reserves special praise for the brave freelance journalists who helped expose the secret bombing, albeit all too late: by the end of the conflict there were parts of the Plain of Jars (a prominent Laotian land feature near the North Vietnamese border) that resembled a lunar surface.

For reasons obscure this title has a different paperback name ("Shooting at the Moon") than hardback ("Back Fire").

Readable.......2002-12-30

Shooting at the Moon details the "alliance" between the American government and the Hmong (Meo) minority people of Laos during the Lao civil wars. Roger Warner writes with a very readable, journalistic style that draws the reader in. The book tracks several main "characters" throughout the war's development and escalation, explores possible motivations for American involvement, and the aftermath of the American betrayal of the Hmong. If you have read "The Ugly American," then you will see many instances of those fictional events happening for real in Shooting at the Moon.

As a university student who read this book to complement a research paper, I was disapppointed. Although very reader-friendly, Warner's style also verges on fiction and it is difficult to separate true fact from his interpretations of events. In such a book, this may be unavoidable, given that he attempts to plop the reader down into Laos of the late 1960's and 1970's. Warner does his job in that sense, but in doing so he blurs the line between fact and fiction. Moreover, I find that he often glosses over events and writes in a very American style, sometimes very dismissive of the Lao and Meo peoples. However, if you are looking for a "real life" wartime Communism vs. Capitalism cliffhanger, then Shooting at the Moon should fulfill that role quite nicely. For more thoroughly researched and more comprehensive books on Lao history, including the Lao Revolution, I would recomend Arthur J. Dommen's Laos: Keystone of Indochina and anything by Martin Stuart-Fox.

Amazon.com

J.R. McNeill, a professor of history at Georgetown University, visits the annals of the past century only to return to the present with bad news: in that 100-year span, he writes, the industrialized and developing nations of the world have wrought damage to nearly every part of the globe. That much seems obvious to even the most casual reader, but what emerges, and forcefully, from McNeill's pages is just how extensive that damage has been. For example, he writes, "soil degradation in one form or another now affects one-third of the world's land surface," larger by far than the world's cultivated areas. Things are worse in some places than in others; McNeill observes that Africa is "the only continent where food production per capita declined after 1960," due to the loss of productive soil. McNeill's litany continues: the air in most of the world's cities is perilously unhealthy; the drinking water across much of the planet is growing ever more polluted; the human species is increasingly locked "in a rigid and uneasy bond with modern agriculture," which trades the promise of abundant food for the use of carcinogenic pesticides and fossil fuels.

The environmental changes of the last century, McNeill closes by saying, are on an unprecedented scale, so much so that we can scarcely begin to fathom their implications. We can, however, start to think about them, and McNeill's book is a helpful primer. --Gregory McNamee

Customer Reviews:

One of a kind book on environmental history.......2007-06-04

I wrote my economics undergraduate thesis on development and environmental management back in 1976-77, and surely I would have enjoyed and valued to have Professor McNeill's book in my hands in those years.

His book is remarkable in many ways. It is a well written book, extraordinarly documented and well supported with eye opening statistical tables and illustrations. His material is useful for graduate and undergraduate students alike, and also for wider audiences interested on reviewing a different approach on history's complexities.

As the book front page indicates, the author centers his work on the 20th century's humankind events, termed by himself as the most influential on the process of ecology's evolution.

The book is very well organized so the reader keeps information organized in a properly way. At the end, Professor McNeill leaves many questions open that will be ample material enough to study in the years to come. Among those questions is the one concerned with society's will to deal seriously with environmental crises that have accumulated on the latest decades. We can have a readily answer to that subject if political leaders continue to privilege the narrow view of economic growth, instead of considering to seriously discuss the implementation of more integral strategies that would deliver environmental friendly sustainable economic development at the end.

Without question I recommend this book.

Easy to read and full of history everyone should know.......2006-12-13

This book may be the best historical survey I've ever read. (And with an M.A. in history, I've read a few!) I got this book to complement my hard science slogging on global warming, and found so much more than I hoped for or ever imagined! McNeil's book provides the historical background and the human context for all the graphs and numbers in the science texts. If you're looking for one book to give you a focused overview of just how much human civilization has accomplished, good and bad, in the last 100 years, this is it.

The organization of the book is excellent. McNeil sources everything, ends each chapter with an excellent summary, and wraps it all up with his own thoughtful commentary on climate change. He uses an inspired mix of the small detail (birds dying mid-flight) and the enormous concept (the Aswan dam affected the entire Mediterranean ecosystem). He describes chains of cause and effect and makes connections other historians and scientists seem to miss. The chapters dealing with agriculture are, I think, particularly relevant to our everyday lives; but students in nearly every subject will find this book useful. My husband is a family physician, and has read the sections on public health; my neighbor is a biologist with the USGS, and is reading the chapter on dams and irrigation.

Thomas Midgley's epitaph.......2006-11-11

Sub-titled "An Environmental History of the 20th Century", this is a sober and objective survey of environmental changes over the past 100 years. I was concerned this would be an emotional appeal or judgmental polemic from the left - but not the case, it is academic and professional history from an environmental perspective (the environment, not "environmental movement"). It's encyclopedic in scope and style.

I would not call this an "entertaining" read (although some of the facts really fire the synapses), but it is deeply rewarding as a broad survey of a very large and complex problem. The chapters and sub-sections are arranged in a logical outline making it possible to read the chapters in any order.

The main idea of the title "something new under the sun" is that humans have so fundamentally changed the environment that things really are very different now than they have ever been historically. To regard our current conditions of energy availability, access to water, unending economic growth - as enduring and normal appears to be an interesting gamble given the facts.

Some interesting trivia: humans did not become the dominate primate until about 8,000 BC with the rise of agriculture (baboons outnumbered humans before then). About one-fifth of all humans that ever lived did so in the 20th century. In sheer energy terms, if all modern technology and energy sources were not available, the average American would need about 70 human slaves to maintain the current standard of living (each American "directs" 70 energy-slave equivalents). Each year, humans move more earth and soil than glaciers, wind erosion, mountain building (plate tectonic uplift), and volcanoes combined. Probably the single most damaging biological organism in earths history was the human primate Thomas Midgley Jr from Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania born in 1889. He invented Freon (which destroys the Ozone layer), and also leaded gasoline, which has polluted most of the worlds soil lasting thousands of years (all of us carry elevated lead levels because of it and will continue to do so for centuries to come, leading to birth defects, lowered IQs, etc..). Midgley contracted Polio at age 51 and invented a system or ropes and pulleys to move his crippled body off the bed - he became tangled and was strangled to death in 1944 by his own invention, before learning how damaging his inventions were.

complete.......2006-11-08

This work is very comprehensive and easy to read. Lots of relevant information.

More People, Bigger Cities.......2006-07-20

The issues of population growth are politically charged and center on social forces behind environmental changes. Indians and Africans argue that population growth matters little; Americans and Europeans argue that it matters greatly. McNeil argues that population growth matters vary dependent on effective environmental management of resources.

Two forces were a part of the population surge and reached a crescendo in the 1950s: improved food supply and disease prevention. The improvements caused a decline in mortality. "By 1996 the total annual increment of population had peaked at about 92 million to 95 million more births than deaths". The demographic started first in Europe then in East Asia after 1950 and in progress, in Africa after 1990. "After 1950 the locus of fast growth changed. In the ensuing half century, Asian numbers more than doubled, Latin America population tripled, and African population quadrupled. Meanwhile Europe and North America grew more slowly, having completed the demographic transition by 1950".

Between 1890 and 1990, world population increased by a factor of 3.5 while CO2 climbed 17 fold, 31% associated with population growth; global emissions of sulfur increased 13 fold, ¼ associated with population. "One may safely suppose that population growth had a minimal role in releasing chlorofluorocarbons into the stratosphere". Pollution and combustion were loosely linked to population. In rich societies, such as the US and Germany, additional people raised pollution levels between 1900 to 1970 because they drove cars, heated with oil or coal, and in general increased combustion. In poor societies they had less of a contributing impact for combustion emission. Population growth without significant industry had must less impact on pollution levels except for human waste and domestic smoke.

Population growth both caused and prevented soil erosion. In places where population growth drove food production to steep hillsides, it quickened soil erosion. Elsewhere, population labor built and maintained soil conservation schemes. Soil Salinization caused from salt deposits moved more agricultural land into non-agricultural status. Food demand drove most of the centuries doubling of cropland.

Population growth accounts for much of the world increase use of water. Between 1900 and 1990 water use increased ninefold.

Deforestation is a murky conundrum of environmental issues and population growth. Deforestation occurred in Ethiopia even when population growth rates were lower. Deforestation can occur in conditions of population growth, population stagnation, and population decline. Population growth rarely acts alone causing deforestation.

"In sum, population growth accounted for a modest share of air pollution-related environmental changes and a large share of those pertaining to water and biota, especially those involved in food production."

Mass migrations from humid to dry lands repeatedly provoked desertification or the progress loss of vegetation. Migration into forest zones brought deforestation. Between 1830 to 1920, Europe alone sent 55 to 70 million emigrants to America, Australia, and Siberia. Large groups of Italians migrated to Brazil too work the coffee fields.

Large cities struggle against the costs of managing waste, garbage, and food supply chains. Consider the tempo of change. "A millennium ago China and the Islamic Middle East had the world's most urbanized populations, but even in these lands 90 to 95 percent of the people lived outside cities." In 1700, only five cities had populations exceeding half a million people. By 1900 there were 43 cities with over a half a million and by 1990 about 800 cities and 270 had populations over a million and 14 topped 10 million. England was the first country to have over half its population living in cities, US reached this level in 1920, Japan 1935, USSR and Mexico 1960, S Korea and S Africa 1985. In 1998, the whole world reached this level. The total number of urban dweller rose from 225 million in 1900 to 2.8 billion in 1998, a 13 fold increase.

Cities absorb large quantities of water; in exchange they pump out goods and services, as well as pollutants, garbage, and solid wastes. In the 19th cities with the exception of Japan reeked of garbage. In Surat, a city of 2.2 million in India, one fifth of the garbage went uncollected leading to the bubonic plague of 1994 causing 56 deaths. By 1997, Surat is the second cleanest city in India. "By in large cities did not address pollution that threatened only diffuse, disorganized, or powerless communities." Poor cities rapid acquired the pollution problems from industry and from fleets of cars, buses, and trucks. Only a few societies accumulated enough capital to invest in pollution abatement. Cities remained concentrated nodes of pollution. Growing cities also needed timber, cement, brick, food, and fuel. "Chicago by 1900 exerted a gravitational pull on timber, livestock, grain and other fruits of the land from a huge region in the heart of North America".

Fossil-Fuel Fallout.(Review): An article from: American Scientist

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Fossil-Fuel Fallout.(Review): An article from: American Scientist
Stephen J. Pyne
Manufacturer: Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

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SOMETHING NEW UNDER THE SUN: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World.(Review) (book review): An article from: The Geographical Review

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SOMETHING NEW UNDER THE SUN: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World.(Review) (book review): An article from: The Geographical Review
Martin W. Lewis
Manufacturer: American Geographical Society
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital
ASIN: B0008JBG1K
Release Date: 2005-07-28

Book Description

This digital document is an article from The Geographical Review, published by American Geographical Society on January 1, 2000. The length of the article is 1059 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: SOMETHING NEW UNDER THE SUN: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World.(Review) (book review)
Author: Martin W. Lewis
Publication: The Geographical Review (Refereed)
Date: January 1, 2000
Publisher: American Geographical Society
Volume: 90 Issue: 1 Page: 147

Article Type: Book Review

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Unnatural history. (Book Review). (book review): An article from: World Watch

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Unnatural history. (Book Review). (book review): An article from: World Watch
Seth Dunn
Manufacturer: Worldwatch Institute
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital
ASIN: B0008ED262
Release Date: 2005-07-29

Book Description

This digital document is an article from World Watch, published by Worldwatch Institute on January 1, 2002. The length of the article is 1820 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Unnatural history. (Book Review). (book review)
Author: Seth Dunn
Publication: World Watch (Magazine/Journal)
Date: January 1, 2002
Publisher: Worldwatch Institute
Volume: 15 Issue: 1 Page: 36(3)

Article Type: Book Review

Distributed by Thomson Gale

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