A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF THE YEAR: A revolutionary new history that
reveals how climate change has dramatically shaped the development--and
demise--of civilizations across time
*Detailing many years of extensive research, endnotes for this
edition run to more than 200 pages. They are available online via a link
contained in the book.*
Global warming is one of the greatest dangers mankind faces today. Even
as temperatures increase, sea levels rise, and natural disasters
escalate, our current environmental crisis feels difficult to predict
and understand. But climate change and its effects on us are not new. In
a bold narrative that spans centuries and continents, Peter Frankopan
argues that nature has always played a fundamental role in the writing
of history. From the fall of the Moche civilization in South America
that came about because of the cyclical pressures of El Niño to volcanic
eruptions in Iceland that affected Egypt and helped bring the Ottoman
empire to its knees, climate change and its influences have always been
with us.
Frankopan explains how the Vikings emerged thanks to catastrophic crop
failure, why the roots of regime change in eleventh-century Baghdad lay
in the collapse of cotton prices resulting from unusual climate
patterns, and why the western expansion of the frontiers in North
America was directly affected by solar flare activity in the eighteenth
century. Again and again, Frankopan shows that when past empires have
failed to act sustainably, they have been met with catastrophe. Blending
brilliant historical writing and cutting-edge scientific research, The
Earth Transformed will radically reframe the way we look at the world
and our future.
