This is an outstanding book. It is true that many people who quote Malthus have not read him. The book is more than about population and food.

His essential premise is that we will run out of food because the population grows at an exponential scale, and food production grows at an arithmetic scale.

His writings go much beyond this and go deep into many issues that society faces. There are sections that are difficult to follow because he took up a lot of space in rebutting one Mr. Godwin!

When you look at the world on a global scale, it's easy to dismiss Malthus' prophecy, that we will run out of food. However, he did address one social problem - that wealth is not equally distributed. Similarly, food is not equally distributed. So, we have undernutrition and malnutrition both running wild on the planet.

Further, he could not know of the industrial revolution, and could not predict the rise of modified food. We may not have run out of food, but we have seen an increasing number of people with various allergies.

He has been prescient in many ways. ( )