Earth Odyssey, by Mark Hertsgaard (Abacus, £7.99 in UK)

Yet another well-considered, thoughtful work reminding us - not that we need reminding - that we are doing things to our environment…

Yet another well-considered, thoughtful work reminding us - not that we need reminding - that we are doing things to our environment, and to the earth in general, which are indefensible and in some cases irreversible. Hertsgaard, an American journalist, nine years ago began a kind of disaster tour which took him through 19 countries and lasted for most of the decade. His brief is wide: traffic pollution in towns and cities, birthrates going out of control (and out of wedlock), the nuclear menace (peacetime, not wartime), the felling of the Amazonian rain forests, Western exploitation of the Third World, pollution in the factory and the workplace. He is not merely a prophet of disaster, however, since in the final pages he proposes a solution to at least some of the world's ills: a sort of revival of Roosevelt's New Deal politics, but on a global level this time.