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The Future Eaters: An Ecological History of the Australasian Lands and People

Tim Flannery

4.18 · Rating details · 753 ratings · 52 reviews

In this illustrated ecological history, acclaimed scientist and historian Flannery follows the environment of the islands through the age of dinosaurs to the age of mammals and the arrival of humans, to the European colonizers and industrial society. Penetrating, gripping, and provocative, this book combines natural history, anthropology, and ecology on an epic scale. ...more

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Paperback, 432 pages

Published October 16th 2002 by Grove Press (first published 1994)

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May 28, 2012 David rated it it was amazing

Shelves: natural-history, evolution, history, paleontology

This is a wonderful book about the natural history of Australia and its neighbors; New Zealand, New Caledonia, and New Guinea. The book is never boring, and is quite accessible to the layman. Tim Flannery describes why the ecology of Australia is so fragile; much of the land is not fertile, compounded by a dry climate. When the ENSO (El Nino Southern Oscillation) ensues at irregular intervals, the climate worsens yet further. In between these episodes, wet periods cause the flora to flourish, ...more

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Jan 21, 2009 Sebastian rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Phenomenal book. Hands down the best Anthropology book I've ever read. It has opened by understanding much further than before on a wide array of concepts such as: sustainability, evolution, war, famine, species diversity etc.

It covers 50,000 years + of evolution; primarily in the south-pacific, but he does go into European evolution and Asian evolution of humans because of their influence on the region.

From megafauna to mountain formations, retracting ice ages, case-by-case analysis of patterns ...more

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Mar 25, 2015 Richard Reese rated it it was amazing

After spending more than 20 years reading hundreds of books describing various aspects of the Earth Crisis, The Future Eaters by Tim Flannery stands out. It provides a sliver of hope for the future that is not built on magical thinking. Flannery is a lad who is madly in love with the Australian region, and he dreams that it will eventually heal, far down the road someday.

Here’s the story. Hominids evolved in Africa, and later migrated into Eurasia, where they lived in some regions for a million ...more

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Feb 10, 2018 Michael rated it it was amazing

Everyone I've mentioned this book to over the last week has made the same comment: The Future Eaters is brilliant, but—Tim Flannery cherrypicks the evidence about megafaunal extinction, or he's bit out of date now, or he's too harsh or too easy on Aboriginal people/white settlers/more recent immigrants. It is both remarkable and utterly predictable that The Future Eaters inspires such nitpickery. It is a vast book, and any book encompassing so many thousands of years of history and so many Everyone I've mentioned this book to over the last week has made the same comment: The Future Eaters is brilliant, but—Tim Flannery cherrypicks the evidence about megafaunal extinction, or he's bit out of date now, or he's too harsh or too easy on Aboriginal people/white settlers/more recent immigrants. It is both remarkable and utterly predictable that The Future Eaters inspires such nitpickery. It is a vast book, and any book encompassing so many thousands of years of history and so many different disciplines—biology, climatology, anthropology, history, litearture—is bound to make little errors of fact. It is also a controversial book. Anyone who claims, as Flannery does, that 'multiculturalism' and 'immigration' are actually unrelated, for example, is bound to raise hackles.

However predictable the nitpickery, it isn't warranted. Flannery is one of the most circumspect historians I've ever read. His chapter on megafaunal extinction, for instance, is scrupulously evenhanded. He believes that humans wiped out the giant kangaroos and diprotodons that once grazed in Australia's primeval rainforests, and the large carnivorous lizards and marsupials that once preyed on them. But before he explains his own point of view, he carefully considers the opposing hypothesis, that these presumably once graceful creatures were eliminated by climate change. He also quite willingly admits where his own evidence is weak: 'at present we have no clear evidence about the nature of interaction between humans and megafauna, for we have no kill sites and very few sites where there is possible evidence for human and megafauna coexisting.' If he really is so prone to cherrypick his evidence, it is remarkable that he should pick this particular piece.

As for his controversial statements, he admits they are often provocations:

I have introduced some radical and provocative views principally because I believe that, given our present understanding, they are the right way to begin. Even if they are eventually discarded, the knowledge gained in investigating them would be invaluable as a base from which to make a beginning.

Flannery is one of Australia's greatest historians. His training is actually in zoology and paleontology. He spent his PhD years trekking all over Australia and PNG discovering extinct species of kangaroo, and describing the evolution of the genus macropodidae. He is a great historian because he thrusts beyond this (admittedly already broad) disciplinary boundary. The Future Eaters is full of references to great writers, explorers, economists, artists and war heroes as well as scientists. He is a bold thinker. He spends much of the book describing events long in the past—30, 40, 50 or 60 thousand years in the past—and has to fill in many of the gaps with theories. But his theories are always rooted in a sane and personal and detailed view of nature's ways.

Nature, Flannery shows, is frighteningly and beautifully plastic, and we humans have an extraordinary power to meddle with it. His main thesis is that the human settlers of the Pacific were the first 'Future Eaters', the first humans to enter a truly vulnerable environment and subdue it to our will. Like the Israelites in Canaan, Future Eaters find themselves in a land of milk and honey. But they glut themselves, and in a few short decades that the bounty of the earth reveals its finitude. Some Future Eaters, like the Australian Aborigines or the Papua New Guineans, then embark on a millenia-long quest for adaptation and balance, and can develop new and beautiful forms of life in a new and revitalised environment. Others, like the M&amacr;ori, or the Easter Islanders, are never given the chance.

It is no wonder this story struck such a chord with Australians when it was published in 1992. This was the very experience of early white settlers. For the first decades, they pitilessly exploited the land. They ringbarked whole forests for a scrap of roof-bark. They felled vast woodlands. They butchered the seals and whales. They neglected to burn the undergrowth. They killed or drove away or seduced the traditional managers of the land. They hardly bothered to cultivate local flora and fauna—indeed, their descendants, me among them, still fail to do so. They tried to recreate English gardens and English households and English fashions in a hot dry land ruled by the El Niño Southern Oscillation.

The tragic thing is, this kind of exploitation can seem to work. Australians were taller, stronger, fitter, longer-lived and more fertile than their English and Irish counterparts for basically the whole nineteenth century. As they observed the Future Eaters of North America rampage across the continent and transform themselves into the world's most powerful society, they thought they might have a crack themselves. But then the droughts came, and the duststorms, and the rotting carcasses of sheep. Then the bandicoots and pademelons and rock wallabies started to die. Then the forests thickened and roared into flame. Then the rabbit warrens tore the soil to pieces. Then the mice broke out, then the prickly pears, then the cane toads. Then the rivers belched poisonous algae. Then the Great Barrier Reef started to perish and petrify.

Luckily, people like Tim Flannery are not alone in Australia today. There is a growing consciousness of our dependance on the land. More people are becoming more aware of just how little we know. And more people are coming to recognise a salient fact that Flannery demonstrates beyond rebuttal in his book:

[Aboriginal] cultures are the result of over 40 000 years of coadaptation with Australian ecosystems. The experience and knowledge encompassed therein is perhaps the single greatest resource that Australians living today possess, for without it we have no precedence; no guide as to how humans can survive long-term in our strange land.

This is the hope Flannery holds out to us: it has been done before. Humans have made made peace with their environment. We can never quite go back, it is true. An industrial society of millions cannot live in the rainforest, and even if we could, the soft-footed herbivores that once maintained the understory are long gone. Likewise an industrial society of millions cannot forage on the grasslands, and even if we could, probably too much of the soil has been ruined to support the stupendously biodiverse garden-like environments the Europeans encountered in 1788. We must make a new treaty with the land. To do that, we have to finish making our treaty with the first people of it. ...more

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Sep 19, 2009 Guy rated it it was amazing

Shelves: ecology, history

A remarkable and fascinating book. I thought that Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel" had created the gold standard for ecological history, but Flannery gives him a run for his money and, in some respects, surpasses him. While Diamond's scope and goals are more grandiose (to explain from first principles why Europeans ended up ruling the world, if only for a while), Flannery's analysis of the ecological history of Australasia is more detailed and left me with a much better understanding of ...more

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Jun 05, 2017 Daniel Passer rated it really liked it

An incredible insight into Australian natural and human history. Things I have read here have change how I view the world!

Very accessible for a layperson: took me forever to read - as science a bit of an unfamiliar stretch for me - but pretty engaging when I didn't find myself distracted.

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Mar 29, 2019 Nadia Zeemeeuw rated it it was amazing

It was such a thought-provoking, educational and fascinating read I simply can’t praise this book enough.

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Jan 29, 2018 Leanne rated it liked it

I really enjoyed this book and it's given me a new appreciation for Australian flora and fauna (particularly flora). While it was very interesting and a lot of it is still relevant, make sure you check up on the latest developments before storing too much of it in the knowledge bank. It is quite dated in many ways and some of his theories have been disproven. I still found it to be a very 'goodread' and would recommend it.

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Dec 21, 2014 Tom Hodgson rated it it was amazing

Shelves: insert-wisdom

My biggest regret regarding this book is that it is just one book, rather than part of a massive genre of writings on Australian geographic & biological history and their interrelations and impacts on humanity.
Need more.

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Apr 12, 2019 Eduardo Santiago rated it really liked it

The title refers to human colonists—not just the Europeans arriving in Australia but all of them, every group of humans arriving in new lands since we first left Africa. Finding seemingly-unlimited resources; discovering that, oops, they're not unlimited; collapsing; sometimes surviving in degraded state—sometimes not.

Book was slightly too long but covered new (to me) material in geology, evolutionary biology especially the rise of birds to fill niches that mammals fill in other environments, The title refers to human colonists—not just the Europeans arriving in Australia but all of them, every group of humans arriving in new lands since we first left Africa. Finding seemingly-unlimited resources; discovering that, oops, they're not unlimited; collapsing; sometimes surviving in degraded state—sometimes not.

Book was slightly too long but covered new (to me) material in geology, evolutionary biology especially the rise of birds to fill niches that mammals fill in other environments, and pre-European cultures of Australasia. Most distinguishing feature was its complete Australiocentricity, the references that took a moment to understand or even flew entirely over my head, the almost complete non-treatment of the Americas as if they were irrelevant. That was refreshing.

Money quote, from near the end:

The European history of the colonisation of Australia has followed the same pattern as has the history of all of the colonists of the 'new' lands. All have arrived at what they are convinced is a virgin land. All have found resources that have never before been tapped, and all have experienced a short period of tremendous boom, when people were bigger and better than before, and when resources seemed so limitless that there was no need to fight for them. Because there was enough for everyone, egalitarian, carefree societies with the leisure to achieve great things, have prospered. There was a period of optimism, when people imagined great futures for their nations. Inevitably, however, each group has found that the resource base is not limitless. Each has experienced a period when the competition for shrinking resources becomes sharper. The struggle between people increases, whether it be a class struggle or a struggle between tribes. If people survive long enough, they eventually come into equilibrium with their newly impoverished land—and their lifestyles are ultimately dictated by the number of renewable resources that their ancestors have left them.

The future eaters of today have no excuses. They cannot claim ignorance, cannot say “who could have known”. They are devouring our planet out of pure greed. I am grateful that my children will never live to see the world we’re leaving them. And I hope to live long enough to see some of those bastards dropped from great heights onto rotating helicopter blades. ...more

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Sep 25, 2017 Mike Hedley rated it liked it

I read the first edition some years ago, back in the 90s in fact. Reading it again now, from the viewpoint of assessing its strengths and weaknesses for a university essay. While Flannery's work is easy to read, it's not without problems, the largest of which is his contention that Aboriginals wiped out the megafauna soon after they arrived on the continent, the absent megafauna meant that the amount of vegetation increased, and that vegetation burned. Flannery based his contention on studies ...more

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Dec 07, 2019 Sammy rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: science, australian, non-fiction, anthropology

A thoroughly fascinating work by a great Australian writer and scientist. Flannery examines the relationship of new arrivals to their land, with Australia as the useful test case. As a land that was populated in the last 100,000 years, but at a much earlier date than, for instance, the Americas, it presents an ideal site for a study of a) why its flora and fauna evolved the way they did, b) what impact the first Australians had on the landscape over their tens of thousands of years of ownership; ...more

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Jul 28, 2019 Jessica Kuzmier rated it liked it

Shelves: popular-science, adult-nonfiction, natural-history

Did humans or climate change cause the extinction of the megafauna and flora of Australasia? Tim Flannery attempts to answer this question in his 1994 book 'The Future Eaters'.

I enjoyed Tim Flannery's 'Future Eaters'. Flannery's narrative tone was engaging, which helped prevent the encyclopedic compendium of facts from sounding like a novel-length shopping list. Not being a paleontologist, I can't know for sure, but much of what Flannery posited seemed speculative, which may be a necessary ...more

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Feb 14, 2017 Loki rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, anthropology, history, ecology

Eminently readable, "The Future Eaters" goes into considerable detail about how geology, evolution, glaciation, and, of course, human intervention, have shaped the ecologies of Australia, New Zealand, New Guinea and New Caledonia. Flannery teases out the similarities and the differences between these four close neighbours, and shows how the ecology of each has functioned in the past and functions today. He does not romanticise any of the human groups he discusses, but neither is he overly ...more

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Feb 01, 2018 Mr_wormwood rated it really liked it

The use of the term 'Future Eaters' as a metaphor fails in terms of the Aboriginal relationship to the Australian environment, more recent research suggests quite the opposite. Nevertheless this is certainly a must-read for anyone interested in Australasian ecology

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Jan 18, 2018 Greg rated it it was amazing

I cannot recommend this book highly enough for those interested in Australian history / ecology / anthropology. Phenomenal.

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Jan 22, 2019 Toon Pepermans rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction

an excellent book (except for the wild speculations at the end of chapter 14)

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Jan 16, 2017 Andrew Ma rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Mind blown.

Addressing a broad overview of Australia's biological past from pre-history to today, but with a personable and personal approach. Very readable. Should be required reading for all Australians - helps contextualise the damaging effects of the european cultural framework we have when we look at our ecology.

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Dec 31, 2013 Adam Cherson rated it really liked it

I rate this book a 4.25 on a scale of 1 to 5 with 5 being best. This is one of the best environmental histories I’ve ever come across. It is simply a mind blowing description of what has happened to the fauna of Australia and environs from the beginning until today. Chock full of interesting hypotheses and speculations:

Dr Jonathon Kingdon...has recently developed a hypothesis about the nature of the ancestors of Australians that seems to fit the few well known facts well. He suggests that when I rate this book a 4.25 on a scale of 1 to 5 with 5 being best. This is one of the best environmental histories I’ve ever come across. It is simply a mind blowing description of what has happened to the fauna of Australia and environs from the beginning until today. Chock full of interesting hypotheses and speculations:

Dr Jonathon Kingdon...has recently developed a hypothesis about the nature of the ancestors of Australians that seems to fit the few well known facts well. He suggests that when modern humans finally reached South-East Asia some 100,000 years ago, they rapidly evolved to suit the unique environment in which they found themselves. He notes that South-East Asia is particularly rich in near shore marine environments which offer extraordinarily rich pickings for large omnivorous primates such as humans......If people were to exploit such resources, they would have had to develop a number of physical and cultural adaptations to help them deal with their new environment....If people were to gather food on the littoral, they would have had to spend long hours exposed to the glare of the midday sun while foraging on beaches, mudflats, and reefs. The risk of sun stroke and skin cancer would have made this extremely dangerous. Their defence consisted of the development of very black skin. Kingdon points out that the primitive skin color for humans is an all-purpose brown, and that very black skin is as extraordinary a deviation from this as white skin...Kingdon calls these first truly black people the Banda, after the islands of the Inner and Outer Arcs north of Australia which, he postulates, were their ancestral home...The move east into Australia/New Guinea would have been the shortest, and perhaps the first major migration they undertook. But they also appear to have migrated far to the west, along the littoral of the Indian Ocean out to the Andaman Islands...and back into the African homeland of all humanity. There, they displaced the original honey-colored Africans from many habitats in coastal and equatorial Africa. 153-155

Perhaps the most immediate problem with attributing the extinctions of large mammals to changes associated with the last ice age is that it is only the most recent of 17 ice ages that have gripped the Earth over the past two million years. Some...have been more severe....Sixteen of the world’s 17 ice ages passed without causing dramatic extinctions. 184

On Dr Gifford Miller: Miller’s findings are quite extraoprdinary for, combined with the ideas developed here, they suggest that the extinction of the mega-herbivores may have altered the climate of an entire continent. Such enormous climatic change has never before been postulated to have resulted from an extinction event. 235

Until around 60,000 years ago, Australia’s ecosystems were fully self-sustaining. Then, vast extinctions devastated the entire continent. Following this, for about 60,000 years Aborigines managed the crippled ecosystems, preventing them from degenerating further. Now, Europeans have arrived and forced the discontinuance of that management. These changes beg the question of what we should aim for in our management of reserved lands. Should we aim to keep them as they are today, as they were 200 years ago, or as they were 60,000 years ago, when they functioned without interference of humans? 380
...more

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Jun 19, 2011 Janice rated it it was amazing

I have just begun to read this book which I've had on my to read shelf for several years. I've always held this one up there as a kind of dessert or reward for reading because I just knew it would be good and so far I am not disappointed.

Two Weeks Later: I've just finished reading 'The Future Eaters'. What an amazing book. I had to put it aside a few times to absorb this complex and comprehensive history (several hundred thousand years of it) of Australia, New Zealand, New Guinea, New Caledonia, ...more

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Mar 07, 2012 Zana rated it really liked it

Shelves: own, book-was-a-gift, nonfiction, nonfiction-book-club

Wow, this is an incredible book. It's very much in the vein of Jared Diamond, but Australia-specific. I can't recommend it highly enough.

My dad assigned it to his class seven years ago when he took them (and me) on a tour of Aboriginal Australia. I read the other two books but didn't get to the this one. I'm glad I suggested reading it for book club, which forced me to sit down and finally read it.

60,000 years ago man arrived in Australia and wiped out the megafauna. Then they had to deal with ...more

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Dec 10, 2010 Jennifer rated it really liked it

Shelves: nonfiction

Nonfiction. Flannery is clearly a kindred spirit of Jared Diamond (Guns, Germs and Steel). While Diamond tends to go global, Flannery, a paleontologist, recounts Australia's unique evolution, the many varieties of marsupials, and the aborigines, whom he identifies as the first future eaters. Their culture, with its origins some 40,000 years ago, first destroyed much of their future sustenance--the flora and fauna they found--then managed to create a new balance in the drastically changed ...more

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Jul 14, 2013 Brent Maxwell rated it liked it

An important book and an enjoyable read, although thoroughly depressing. The Future Eaters walls through the history of Australasia sharing with how the continents shifted info their current arrangement, and ending with a thorough investigation into how modern Australian culture has been shaped.

Laden with scientific references, the book dives deep, and although this can be a touch tedious at times, it's clearly enough written and well structured so that is easy to skim as necessary.

To any ...more

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May 28, 2007 Ben rated it really liked it

Though Flannery's general thesis is pretty apparent by the end of the first chapter, this book is worth reading for its intriguing line of argumentation and the wealth of research that was obviously put into it. At times, it becomes arduous to wade through the volume of information provided, but it is worth the effort. At the end of the day, Tim Flannery has managed to convince me that humanity is generally pretty stupid and Australia is kind of a dump. Now if that isn't insightful, I don't know ...more

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Mar 29, 2008 Peter Macinnis rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: every grandparent who worries about the future

Shelves: history, science, ecology-evolution, biology, australia, environment

I worked with Tim at the Australian Museum, and when I read this, I kept slapping myself on the forehead, saying "I knew that". It was only later that I realised we had been sitting on the same exhibition design committee, and I had been quietly absorbing his ideas.

If he had not written this, I might have done, which would have been scurvy on two counts -- first, he would have been ripped off, and second, the public would have been ripped off, because Tim is a better writer.

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Jul 14, 2015 R. Hill rated it it was amazing

Flannery is absolutely one of my favorite authors. He is a top tier scientist that has a real ability to bring together the natural history of a subject like no other. In this does book he does not disappoint. Here he shows how Australians have been altering their continent for over 60 millennia and continue to do so. As have humans on all seven continents. A sad tale that we can learn from if we start listening before it is too late.

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Jan 28, 2013 Pawel added it · review of another edition

Fascinating take on Australia. First People kill big Game - many species become extinct. The New People kill first People - Aboriginal culture becomes extinct, most of the species is threatend or extinct.
I remember what Green's leader Bob Brown said about technologically advanced civilization - they also go extinct. This is one reason why we do not hear from alien creatures. They collapsed before sending out UFO-s.

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Feb 22, 2009 V rated it really liked it

I learned that the British learned trench warfare from the Maori. And a bunch of things about the Ecology of this region too. The best thing about the book was the limited time it spent talking about people (very much just the second half) and the extended treatment it gave of all the islands in Australasia.

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Feb 07, 2012 Nick rated it really liked it

What an interesting book! Tim Flannery takes us back to the first human settlements on the Australian continent, and compares the extinction of the megafauna with the New Zealand experience. A huge wealth of fascinating information about the ecosystems in these beautiful and unique countries. I loved this book!

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Jul 26, 2008 John Jordan rated it really liked it · review of another edition

An excellent journey through the history of the spread of human civilization and its impact on the environment, flora and fauna. How the envoronment also shaped the migration patterns, particularly of Australasia.

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About Tim Flannery

Tim Flannery

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Tim Flannery is one of Australia's leading thinkers and writers.

An internationally acclaimed scientist, explorer and conservationist, he has published more than 130 peer-reviewed scientific papers and many books. His books include the landmark works The Future Eaters and The Weather Makers, which has been translated into more than 20 languages and in 2006 won the NSW Premiers Literary Prizes for ...more