The Upside of Down Online!!

You can now read (you can read, can't you?) the entire book, The Upside of Down, the brilliant and insightful Thomas Homer-Dixon, who has quite obviously studied other authors mentioned in Chaos' bibliography (in fact, that's a fun exercise...to figure out which ones), and more than any recent author, is skilled in presenting the issue of why our civilization, which depends mightily on huge flows of energy, is at risk for catastrophic failure. A long and extremely important read.
(Update) The link has now been removed, for unknown reasons (copyright, perhaps? giving away books is not a good business model), but not before Chaos had a chance to finish it. The work is outstanding, so much so that Chaos will buy it anyway and lend it out to local readers. The usual entry into this field of study is technical and difficult to peruse, but Homer-Dixon's work is imminently readable for non-experts. Chaos cannot recommend this book enough.