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FOOD, MORE PEOPLE: See “The World at Six Billion,” United Nations, 1999; Mark Overton, Agricultural Revolution in England: The Transformation of the Agrarian Economy, 1500–1850 (Cambridge University Press, 1996); and Milton Friedman and Rose Friedman, Free to Choose (Harvest, 1990; originally published 1979). Information from Will Masters, a professor of agricultural economics at Purdue, came from an author interview. For a stunning exhibition of Masters’s mastery at setting theories of agricultural economics to verse, see Stephen J. Dubner, “Why Are Kiwis So Cheap?” Freakonomics blog, The New York Times, June 4, 2009.

CONSIDER THE WHALE: The rise and fall of whale hunting is beautifully told in Eric Jay Dolin, Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America (W.W. Norton & Company, 2007). See also: Charles Melville Scammon, The Marine Mammals of the Northwestern Coast of North America: Together with an Account of the American Whale-Fishery, 1874; Alexander Starbuck, History of the American Whale Fishery From Its Earliest Inception to the Year 1876, published by the author, 1878; and Paul Gilmour, “Saving the Whales, Circa 1852,” Letter to the Editor, The Wall Street Journal, December 6, 2008.

THE MYSTERIES OF POLIO: See David M. Oshinsky, Polio: An American Story (Oxford University Press, 2005), a truly excellent book on the topic; and “The Battle Against Polio,” NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, PBS, April 24, 2006. / 144 The fallacious polio/ ice-cream link was raised by David Alan Grier, a statistician at George Washington University, in Steve Lohr, “For Today’s Graduate, Just One Word: Statistics,” The New York Times, August 5, 2009. / 145 For estimated cost savings of the polio vaccines, see Kimberly M. Thompson and Radboud J. Duintjer Tebbens, “Retrospective Cost-Effectiveness Analysis for Polio Vaccination in the United States,” Risk Analysis 26, no. 6 (2006); and Tebbens et al., “A Dynamic Model of Poliomyelitis Outbreaks: Learning from the Past to Help Inform the Future,” American Journal of Epidemiology 162, no. 4 (July 2005). / 145–146 For other cheap and simple medical fixes, see Marc W. Kirschner, Elizabeth Marincola, and Elizabeth Olmsted Teisberg, “The Role of Biomedical Research in Health Care Reform,” Science 266 (October 7,1994); and Earl S. Ford et al., “Explaining the Decrease in U.S. Deaths from Coronary Disease, 1980–2000,” New England Journal of Medicine 356, no. 23 (June 7, 2007).

THE KILLER CAR: For number of cars in the 1950s, see “Topics and Sidelights of the Day in Wall Street: Fuel Consumption,” The New York Times, May 25, 1951. For industry fears over safety concerns, see “Fear Seen Cutting Car Traffic, Sales,” The New York Times, January 29,1952.

THE STRANGE STORY OF ROBERT MCNAMARA’S SEAT BELT: This section is based on a number of sources, including author interviews with McNamara shortly before his death. See also: “A Life in Public Service: Conversation with Robert McNamara,” April 16, 1996, by Harry Kreisler, part of the Conversations with History series, Institute of International Studies, University of California, Berkeley; The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara, directed by Errol Morris, 2003, Sony Pictures Classics; Richard Alan Johnson, Six Men Who Built the Modern Auto Industry (MotorBooks/MBI Publishing Company, 2005); and Johnson, “The Outsider: How Robert McNamara Changed the Automobile Industry,” American Heritage, Summer 2007. / 149 Seat belt usage over time: see Steven D. Levitt and Jack Porter, “Sample Selection in the Estimation of Air Bag and Seat Belt Effectiveness,” The Review of Economics and Statistics 83, no. 4 (November 2001). / 149 For lives saved by seat belts, see Donna Glassbrenner, “Estimating the Lives Saved by Safety Belts and Air Bags,” National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, paper no. 500; and “Lives Saved in 2008 by Restraint Use and Minimum Drinking Age Laws,” NHTSA, June 2009. / 149 3 trillion miles driven per year: gleaned from U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics…/ 149 Dangerous roads on other continents: see “Road