BibLit Special - Peter Frankopan

When we think about history, we rarely pay much attention to the most destructive floods, the worst winters, the most devastating droughts or the ways that ecosystems have changed over time. In The Earth Transformed, Peter Frankopan, one of the world's leading historians, shows that the natural environment is a crucial, if not the defining, factor in global history. This groundbreaking book looks at the origins of our species; the development of religion and language and their relationships with the environment; how the desire to centralise agricultural surplus formed the origins of the bureaucratic state; how growing demands for harvests resulted in the increased shipment of enslaved peoples; about how efforts to understand and manipulate the weather have a long and deep history. All provide lessons of profound importance as we face a precarious future of rapid global warming.