Facing Limits: Abundance, Scarcity, and the American Way of Life

Carson Fellow and environmental historian Donald Worster argues that the discovery of the “New World” in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was the most important event in modern history. These explorations gave Western society a wealth of natural resources that has never since been duplicated. Based around the controversy of the 1970s global bestseller, Limits to Growth, Worster examines the implications of the discovery of the New World and how society has transformed from one of natural abundance to one that is faced with scarcity. Donald Worster is the Hall Distinguished Professor of American History at the University of Kansas, where he has been a member of the faculty since 1989.