Paul Sabin’s The Bet offers perhaps the best-researched, best-written and most thorough account of the history and meaning of the famous 1980 bet between population pessimist Paul Ehrlich and resource optimist Julian Simon. Sabin is unceasingly fair in his treatment of the antagonists, a tough trick to pull off when working with such charged material.
In fact I’d say Sabin is too fair to Ehrlich, who predicted famine and social collapse in the 1960s, 70s, 80s, and 90s and recommended policies that (inadvertently / unintentionally / because he didn’t know better) would have helped cause those calamities.
The book is recommended if you are interested in population, natural resources, or environmental policy.
Sabin’s book on the history of the oil market in California is also an excellent read.