This book describes the history of the inter-relationships in Europe between population, land, resources, and disease.

Massimo Livi Bacci is Professor of Demography at the University of Florence. From 1989 to 1993 he was President of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population. He has taught or held research fellowships at universities all over the world, including the Collège de France, the Colegio de Mexico, Princeton University, University of California at Berkeley, and Brown University. His previous books include A Concise History of World Population (Blackwell, 2nd edition 1996).
Cynthia and Carl Ipsen live in Bloomington, Indiana. Carl Ipsen has also published Dictating Demography: The Problem of Population in Fascist Italy (1996).