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Share"Climate change is the ignored player on the historical stage," writes archeologist Brian Fagan.
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But it shouldn't be, not if we know what's good for us.
We can't judge what future climate change will mean unless we know something about its effects in the past: "those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it." And Fagan's story of the last thousand years, centered on the "Little Ice Age," reminds us of what we could end up repeating: flood, fire, and famine--acts of God exacerbated by acts of man.
For all that he takes a broad--a very broad--view of European history, Fagan's writing is laced with human faces, fascinating anecdotes, and a gift for the telling detail that makes history live, very much in the style of Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror.
When Fagan talks about the voyages of Basque fishermen to American shores (probably landing before Columbus sailed), he puts in the taste of dried cod and the terrifying suddenness of fogs on the Grand Banks.
The Great Fire of London, what it was like when the Dutch dikes broke, the Irish Potato Famine, the year without a summer, ice fairs on the Thames, and volcanoes in the South Pacific--Fagan makes history a ripping yarn in which we are all actors, on a stage that has always been changing.
--Mary Ellen Curtin.
For more information about the title The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History, 1300-1850, read the full description at Amazon.com, or see the following related books:
A Forest of Kings: The Untold Story of the Ancient Maya — The recent interpretation of Maya hieroglyphs has given us the first written history of the New World as it existed before the European invasion. In ... > read more
Ancient North America: The Archaeology of a Continent — Since its first edition in 1990, Ancient North America has been praised as a definitive synthesis of North American archaeology. The third edition ... > read more
The Weather Makers : How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth — Sometime this century the day will arrive when the human influence on the climate will overwhelm all other natural factors. Over the past decade, the ... > read more
The Two-Mile Time Machine: Ice Cores, Abrupt Climate Change, and Our Future — Richard Alley, one of the world's leading climate researchers, tells the fascinating history of global climate changes as revealed by reading the ... > read moreRecommend this page on Facebook, Twitter,
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