The Great Warming: Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations for $6.50

Cheap The Great Warming: Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations Discount Review Shop

Available at Amazon

Cheap "The Great Warming: Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations" Discount Review Shop

"The Great Warming: Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations" Overview

A breakout bestseller on how the earth’s previous global warming phase reshaped human societies from the Arctic to the Sahara—a wide-ranging history with sobering lessons for our own time.
From the tenth to the fifteenth century the earth experienced a rise in surface temperature that changed climate worldwide—a preview of today’s global warming. In some areas, including western Europe, longer summers brought bountiful harvests and population growth that led to cultural flowering. In the Arctic, Inuit and Norse sailors made cultural connections across thousands of miles as they traded precious iron goods. Polynesian sailors, riding new wind patterns, were able to settle the remotest islands on earth. But in many parts of the world, the warm centuries brought drought and famine. Elaborate societies in western and central America collapsed, and the vast building complexes of Chaco Canyon and the Mayan Yucatán were left empty. The history of the Great Warming of a half millennium ago suggests that we may yet be underestimating the power of climate change to disrupt our lives today—and our vulnerability to drought, writes Fagan, is the “silent elephant in the room.”

Brian Fagan is emeritus professor of anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His books on the interaction of climate and human society have established him as a leading authority on the subject; he lectures frequently around the world. He is the editor of The Oxford Companion to Archaeology and the author of Fish on Friday: Feasting, Fasting, and the Discovery of the New World; The Little Ice Age; and The Long Summer, among many other titles.

Anthropologist and historian Brian Fagan reveals how subtle changes in the environment during the earth’s previous global warming phase, from the tenth to the fifteenth centuries, reshaped human societies from the Arctic to the Sahara. The history of the Great Warming suggests that we may yet be underestimating the power of climate change to disrupt our lives today—and our vulnerability to drought, writes Fagan, is the “silent elephant in the room.”

Half a millennium ago, the earth experienced a rise in surface temperature that changed climate worldwide—a preview of today’s global warming. In some areas, including Western Europe, longer summers brought bountiful harvests and population growth that led to cultural flowering. In the Arctic, Inuit and Norse sailors made cultural connections across thousands of miles as they traded precious iron goods. Polynesian sailors, riding new wind patterns, were able to settle the remotest islands on earth. But in many parts of the world, the warm centuries brought drought and famine. Elaborate societies in western and central America collapsed, and the vast building complexes of Chaco Canyon and the Mayan Yucatan were left empty.

Fagan uses that natural history to show that the planet is due for its next warming phase, and explore the dramatic changes that may be in store for the human societies of today when it takes place.

“[A] fascinating account of shifting climatic conditions and their consequences from about A.D. 800 to 1300, often referred to as the Medieval Warm Period . . . Mr. Fagan, an anthropologist who has written on climate change in The Long Summer and The Little Ice Age, proceeds methodically, working his way across the globe and reading the evidence provided by tree rings, deep-sea cores, coral samples, computer weather models and satellite photos. The picture that emerges remains blurry . . . but it has sharpened considerably over the past 40 years, enough for Mr. Fagan to present a coherent account of profound changes in human societies from the American Southwest to the Huang He River basin in China.”—William Grimes, The New York Times

"There are optimists who, upon reading the opening chapters of this new book about the warming trend that gripped the planet from the 9th to the 14th centuries A.D., will be tempted to conclude that our current predicament isn't all bad. And to a degree, they'd be right. Take the peasants of Western Europe. For them, higher temperatures meant longer summers, bigger harvests and a nice break from centuries of near-starvation. The cathedral of Charters, the author points out, was a direct product of global warming, financed by the boom-time donations of local farmers. Melting ice allowed Norse sailors to open lucrative trade routes with Inuits in Greenland, while Polynesians harnessed shifting winds to colonize faraway islands. Then there's Genghis Khan. His bloody rampage across the Asian continent happened in no small part because the grasslands of the Mongolian steppes grew too parched for his people to graze their horses there. Which brings us to the real side of global warming: According to Fagan, it's not tsunamis or hurricanes we should be fretting about, it's drought. Harnessing a variety of research tools available to archeologists and climatologists—tree ring studies, deep-sea and pollen cores, ice borings and even human bone analyses—Fagan reconstructs a worldwide wave of pitiless, prolonged droughts that struck large swaths of Asia, Australia, Africa and the Americas. The Mayan civilization partially collapsed during the period, mainly for lack of water, while numerous other cultures splintered or declined. As for North America, let's just say that the Southwest wasn't the most popular place to be. If history is any guide, the folks in L.A., Tucson and Phoenix might want to start thinking about, say, Albany."—Thomas Jackson, Forbes

“The Great Warming is a thought-provoking read, which marshals a remarkable range of learning.” —Financial Times

“The Great Warming is a riveting work that will take your breath away and leave you scrambling for a cool drink of water. The latter is a luxury to enjoy in the present, Fagan notes, because it may be in very short supply in the future."—Christian Science Monitor

“Fagan is a great guide. His canvas may be smaller than Jared Diamond's Collapse, but Fagan's eye for detail and narrative skills are better.”—New Scientist

“Brian Fagan offers a unique contribution to this discussion [of climate change] . . . Readers should not underestimate this book, writing it off as another addition to a burgeoning genre: the travel guide to a torrid world. Fagan’s project is much bigger. He re-creates past societies in a lively and engaging manner, aided by his expert synthesis of obscure climatological data . . . In his ability to bring n

Available at Amazon

Cheap "The Great Warming: Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations" Discount Review Shop

Best History Textbook

Friday, May 13, 2011