These 5 books occupied my leisure reading over the past few months (I did not work for 5 weeks following the cycling crash). Subjects include the coming population crash (yes, population crash), the story of a neuroscientist who lost part of her mind following a stroke and how she recovered, a primal cookbook, an extensive treatise on biodiversity and its impact on human health, and a synthesis of the origin of humankind. 

The Coming Population Crash and our Planet’s Surprising Future

Fred Pearce 
 

One may think the global human population will keep growing over the next century and bring the Earth to its knees. Well, it is still growing, and yes, we may not make it comfortably through the coming peak of about 9 billion inhabitants, but by mid-century, the Earth’s population is going down. Why? Not enough babies. “Mothers today have fewer than half as many offspring as their own mothers.” For some European countries the birth rate has declined so rapidly they are not replacing their indigenous population and will grow by immigration.