Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond

[Simon]

Guns, Germs and Steel: A short history of everybody for the last 13,000 years - by Jared Diamond

Perhaps not wholly relevant to this forum but an interesting book nonetheless. It starts with Diamond relating a question asked of him which was "How was it that a small (less than 200) expedition of Spanish adventurers under Pizarro managed to conquer the mighty Inca empire with its army of 10s of thousands. He then  traces the expansion and conquests of various peoples from the earliest civilisations. He attempts to answer such questions why we don't speak Arabic today, why Native Americans are now confined to reserves and why the black Bantu came to dominate sub-saharan Africa.

Perhaps the "environmental" theme is touch upon when Diamond discusses population densities arguing that it takes a certain population density to provide the necessary resources for societies to develop new ideas.

This is a book I enjoyed and recommend it.

You can read a number of quite detailed reviews at Amazon.