The papers collected in this volume recount a 40-year struggle between scholarship and illusion on matters of great importance. They do much more than that: They present a matchless course of instruction in the demographics of poverty and prosperity, hardship and health, and progress and decline, and they paint a vivid, pointillist portrait of the circumstances of modern humanity. Nick Eberstadt, armed only with data and patient study, debunks Al Gore, Jared Diamond, and Planned Parenthood on population growth and population control; then demolishes a phalanx of ideologues on world hunger and famine; then shreds Jeffrey Sachs and UN officialdom on economic growth and international aid programs. And then he dares all of us to confront humanitarian catastrophes that many prefer to ignore, such as enforced immiserization in North Korea and the now-extensive global practice of selective abortion of females.