Includes index.

Bibliography: p. 319-336.

The Lean Years is about natural resources and political power. It is about the crucial issues at the center of the news stories of today: the scarcity of natural resources, the growing depletion of existing energy supplies, and the economic, political, and military upheavals that are rapidly emerging in response to these problems. The Lean years shows how financial speculation in the world's minerals results inflation, and how the world's major grain producers contribute to the maldistribution of food. The Lean Years reveals why military power cannot keep the oil flowing in a world where war increasingly threatens, and why the world unemployment crisis is the time bomb of the eighties. -- Back cover