The earth transformed : an untold history

"Global warming is one of the greatest dangers mankind faces today. Even as temperatures increase, sea levels rise, and natural disasters escalate, our current environmental crisis feels difficult to predict and understand. But climate change and its effects on us are not new. In a bold narrative that spans centuries and continents, Peter Frankopan argues that nature has always played a fundamental role in the writing of history. From the fall of the Moche civilization in South America that came about because of the cyclical pressures of El Niño to volcanic eruptions in Iceland that affected Egypt and helped bring the Ottoman empire to its knees, climate change and its influences have always been with us"--

1. The world from the dawn of time (c.4.5 bn-c.7m BC) 2. On the origins of our species (c.7m-c.12,000 BC) 3. Human interactions with ecologies (c.12,000-c.3500 BC) 4. The first cities and trade networks (c.3500-c.2500 BC) 5. On the risks of living beyond one's means (c.2500-c.2200 BC) 6. The first age of connectivity (c.2200-c.800 BC) 7. Regarding nature and the divine (c.1700-c.300 BC) 8. The steppe frontier and formation of empires (c.1700-c.300 BC) 9. The Roman warm period (c.300 BC-AD c.500) 10. The crisis of late antiquity (AD c.500-c.600) 11. The golden age of empire (c.600-c.900) 12. The medieval warm period (c.900-c.1250) 13. Disease and the formation of a New World (c.1250-c.1450) 14. On the expansion of ecological horizons (c.1400-c.1500) 15. The fusion of the old and the new worlds (c.1500-c.1700) 16. On the exploitation of nature and people (c.1650-c.1750) 17. The little Ice Age (c.1550-c.1800) 18. Concerning great and little divergences (c.1600-c.1800) 19. Industry, extraction and the natural world (c.1800-c.1870) 20. The age of turbulence (c.1870-c.1920) 21. Fashioning new utopias (c.1920-c.1950) 22. Reshaping the global environment (the mid-twentieth century) 23. The sharpening of anxieties (c.1960-c.1990) 24. On the edge of ecological limits (c.1990-today)

"This is a Borzoi book."--Title page verso."Endnotes for this book ... run to more than 200 pages ... I decided to post all the notes on www.bloomsbury.com/theearthtransformed, where they can be downloaded, consulted, and searched at leisure."--Page 663.Includes bibliographical references and index.