Signed Edition with signed exclusive endpapers,sprayed edge (block colour top and bottom) and a ribbon
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Most people can name the influential leaders and major battles of the past. Few can name the most destructive storms,the worst winters,the most devastating droughts. In The Earth Transformed,ground-breaking historian Peter Frankopan reconnects us with our ancestors who,like us,worshipped,exploited and conserved the natural environment - and draws salutary conclusions about what the future may bring.
In this revelatory book,Frankopan shows that engagement with the natural world and with climatic change and their effects on us are not new: exploring,for instance,how the development of religion and language and their relationships with the environment; tracing how growing demands for harvests resulted in the increased shipment of enslaved peoples; scrutinising how the desire to centralise agricultural surplus formed the origins of the bureaucratic state; and seeing how efforts to understand and manipulate the weather have a long and deep history.
Understanding how past shifts in natural patterns have shaped history,and how our own species has shaped terrestrial,marine and atmospheric conditions is not just important but essential at a time of growing awareness of the severity of the climate crisis. Taking us from the beginning of recorded history to the present day,The Earth Transformed forces us to reckon with humankind's continuing efforts to make sense of the natural world.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLCISBN: 9781526663368Number of pages: 704Dimensions: 234 x 153 mm
MEDIA REVIEWS
'Humanity has transformed the Earth: Frankopan transforms our understanding of history'- Financial Times
'Frankopan shows you how everything fits together... vast,learned and timely... The Earth Transformed is Sapiens for grown-ups... it holds lessons for a world grappling with rapid climate change caused by human industry'- Dan Jones,Sunday Times
'Frankopan has brought all this scholarly work together into a massive book that is comprehensive,well-informed and fascinating. It has the intellectual weight and dramatic force of a tsunami... this is an endlessly fascinating book,an easy read on an important issue'- Gerard DeGroot,The Times
'Frankopan demonstrates an impressive mastery of anthropological,historical,and meteorological literature,and his scrupulously evenhanded analysis carefully notes uncertainties in scientific and historical evidence. Elegant and cogently argued,this illuminates an age-old and urgently important dynamic'- Publishers Weekly
'This is epic,gripping,original history that leaps off the page. I wanted to buy everyone I know a copy'- Sathnam Sanghera,author of Empireland
'All Historians aiming to tell a narrative face the problem of when exactly to start it. Only Peter Frankopan would go back 2.5 billion years to the Great Oxidation Event'- Tom Holland
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
Peter Frankopan
British writer and academic Peter Frankopan is a leading expert in the history of the Mediterranean,Russia,the Middle East and Central Asia best known for his globally bestselling history The Silk Roads: A New History of the World. He is also the author of The First Crusade,an illustrated edition of The Silk Roads for children and 2018's The New Silk Roads: The Present and Future of the World.
Visit the Peter Frankopan author page
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