The Earth Transformed

Climate change is real. There is no question that global warming will have a dramatic impact on a significant part of the world’s population. Scientific models predicting famine, large-scale migration and the failure and collapse of cities are right to do so – because history is filled with cases where this is precisely what happened.

In Climate Change and the Making of History, acclaimed historian Peter Frankopan draws on new scientific archives to reveal how environmental change has shaped our world: from the fall of the Ming dynasty in China, to the emergence of Viking society, to the collapse of Angkor. Ranging from the beginning of recorded history to the present today, he explores how religions and language can trace their evolution to climate change, and demonstrates that contemporary concerns about pollution, damage and altering climatic patterns are nothing new; rather, they follow in a long tradition of humankind’s efforts to make sense of and live within the natural world.

By turns revolutionary and revelatory, invigorating and incisive, Climate Change and the Making of History is a manifesto for human action, rooted in the lessons offered up by our past.