The Earth Transformed: An Untold History by Peter Frankopan (PB)

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.

Review

Praise for Peter Frankopan: ‘He has the gift of perspective – the capacity to see the wood for the trees–which he combines with a Tolstoyan knack for weaving little details into the broader sweep of human affairs — Jamie Susskind ― Daily Telegraph

Frankopan is a brilliant guide to terra incognita — Niall Ferguson ― Sunday Times

Peter Frankopan has a sharp eye for startling facts — Richard Drayton ― Times Literary Supplement

[His] skill is that he able to step back a few more paces from the world map and global events than most modern commentators, whilst encouraging us to use history as a way of looking forward than regressing into the past — Joseph Wilkins ― Total Politics

He is a Herodotus of the twenty-first century ― Irish Left Review

Book Description

A groundbreaking reassessment of climate change throughout history, from Sunday Times bestselling author of The Silk Roads, Peter Frankopan

About the Author

Peter Frankopan is Professor of Global History at Oxford University and Senior Research Fellow at Worcester College, Oxford. The Silk Roads: A New History of the World, published by Bloomsbury in 2015, was a No. 1 Sunday Times bestseller and remained in the top 10 for nine months after publication. It was named one of the ‘Books of the Decade’ 2010-2020 by the Sunday Times. The New Silk Roads: The Present and Future of the World was published by Bloomsbury in 2018 and won the Human Sciences prize of the Carical Foundation in 2019.