The people of European descent form the bulk of the population in most of the temperate zones of the world--North
America, Australia, and New Zealand. The military successes of European imperialism are easy to explain; in many
cases they were a matter of firearms against spears. But as Alfred Crosby explains in this highly original and
fascinating book, the Europeans' displacement and replacement of the native peoples in the temperate zones was
more a matter of biology than of military conquest.