Thomas Robert Malthus, sometimes called "England's first political economist," occupies an important place between the Scottish Adam Smith and David Ricardo in the history of economics, but his claim to a larger fame rests exclusively on his Essay on Population, which he first published anonymously in 1798. An Essay on Population argued that population tended to increase at a much faster rate than food production and that this tendency would be fatal to proposed utopias that promised to eliminate malnutrition, curtail diseases, and lengthen the average life span. It was not a new thesis, having been anticipated by Robert Wallace, among others. But Malthus presented his case dramatically and enshrined his argument with an air of scientific certainty that made it both lively and compelling. It was a stunning rhetorical achievement, perfect in its timing: An Essay on Population was most welcome in England during a period when radical...