Donald Worster engages with key political, economic, and environmental thinkers while presenting his own interpretation of the role of capitalism and government in issues of wealth, abundance, and scarcity. In his excellent Shrinking the Earth, Donald Worster makes the convincing case that this disconnect between simple mathematics and the ivory towers ultimately stems from the discovery of the western Hemisphere by Europeans, which essentially doubled their carrying capacity. Worster's careful, multifaceted analysis of the many complex factors influencing and driving human response to resource levels and limits is far more ecological in its approach.