The Wall Street Journal Online took notice of The Triumph of Human Empire in a review by distinguished environmental historian J.R. McNeill (Jan. 9, 2014):
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303393804579308471737968440
McNeill points out how many of us enjoyed these writers’ works as children: “Millions of people had their ideas about technology, nature and the human condition influenced by these men.” Reading them as adults, we can also see “how seriously they grappled with the problems of their day.” Their seriousness, however, does not get in their way of telling a good story. “If Ms. Williams introduces one more reader to the remarkable worlds of Morris’s ‘News from Nowhere’ or Verne’s ‘Invasion of the Sea,’ that is justification enough for her insightful book.” (I would add one more title to McNeill’s list: Stevenson’s ‘The Ebb-Tide,’ as compact and grim and memorable as Joseph Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness,’ but even better.)
