Now that humanity acknowledges that the problems that threaten to destroy it are of its own making, Toynbee in this book argues that habits, unlike instincts, can be changed and that faced with the inescapable choice, humanity will prefer painful changes of habit to self-destruction. This, he stresses is what is required for the problems now confronting us can only be solved by a radical break with our deeply ingrained habits. Each of the issues facing the modern world is examined from this point of view, from the pressures of population and urbanization, the challenge of increased affluence and leisure, and religious pluralism to the question of political unification and a new world order. Arnold Toynbee also wrote Mankind and Mother Earth, A Study of History and An Historian's Approach to Religion.