The Global Casino: An Introduction to Environmental Issues

This new (2018) review of environmental science is impressively researched, with the latest findings---very important for a field in which many hundreds of new studies come available every year. For instance, I looked at 60 of his references, and found that an impressive 24 of them, 40%, were published in 2010 or after. Middleton is an Oxford prof and takes an international perspective, so those wishing emphasis on American issues may be less interested, but those in other countries perhaps more. His writing is professional, rather dense, and often dry and technical, so appropriate for upper-division, grad students or professionals, for many basic environmental/ecological concepts are omitted. The book is sprinkled with engaging and uncommon photos of environmental problems throughout the world. Middleton's approach is to present the facts as speaking for themselves, not mounting a polemic. I respected this tone: a number of environmental problems are far worse than popularly believed, but some others not as severe and progress is being made.

The e-book version of this (or at least the version readable through Kindle Cloud Reader) has major issues - along with casual spelling errors throughout the textbook, the formatting, especially of highlighted lists or info-boxes is really difficult to read and understand. Most crucially, some errors actually prevent info from being transmitted - there is one info box in particular where numbers in a table are replaced with apparently random symbols. The book itself is good, and has served me well for my course work, but the e-book was not the way to go, and not worth the few bucks I saved versus a physical copy.

Had this book for less than a week and about 20 pages are already detached from the binding. Terrible Quality. I'm scared to return because I need this book for a class I'm taking.

This book is useful for university students studying geography. I found it useful and it aided more than one of my modules.

so ridiculous that a book on the environment is printed on the heaviest paper ever