The Human Tide

How Population Shaped the Modern World

By: Paul Morland

Narrated by: Zeb Soanes

A dazzling new history of the irrepressible demographic changes and mass migrations that have made and unmade nations, continents, and empires

The rise and fall of the British Empire; the emergence of America as a superpower; the ebb and flow of global challenges from Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and Soviet Russia. These are the headlines of history, but they cannot be properly grasped without understanding the role that population has played.

The Human Tide shows how periods of rapid population transition -- a phenomenon that first emerged in the British Isles but gradually spread across the globe--shaped the course of world history. Demography -- the study of population -- is the key to unlocking an understanding of the world we live in and how we got here.

Demographic changes explain why the Arab Spring came and went, how China rose so meteorically, and why Britain voted for Brexit and America for Donald Trump. Sweeping from Europe to the Americas, China, East Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa, The Human Tide is a panoramic view of the sheer power of numbers.

Fascinating read

This book gave a very interesting and engaging perspective into history through the lens of demography, a force that’s typically barely mentioned. The foresights at the conclusion of the book were the most eye-opening.

An important book.

An important and beautifully written book. For anyone with an interest in developing a comprehension of geopolitics and long term social and economic developments, this book will provide a cornerstone for framing that understanding.

Excellent material

I gave only 4 stars because the material is somewhat dry. But really it a book regarding numbers and trends so you really could not expect it to be a exciting , egde of the seat stories line. it really is a good book that makes you think about how things are changing based on demographics.

This is a book that I will probably go through again.

dry

Very dry book. I am usually into history and science books but this just seemed to drone on. To be fair, I only listened to the first quarter of the book, maybe the end picked up speed.

Fascinatingly wrong but boringly told

This book is basically a non-stop spewing of numbers with no understanding of what caused the numbers in the first place.

Phrases such as modernization equals this or industrialization causes that Are spewed non-stop. Yet at no point his energy meaningfully discussed