Peter Frankopan: The Earth Transformed

When we think about history, we rarely pay much attention to the most destructive floods, the worst winters, the most devastating droughts or the ways that ecosystems have changed over time.

In The Earth Transformed, Peter Frankopan, one of the world’s leading historians and author of bestselling The Silk Road, shows that the natural environment is a crucial, if not the defining, factor in global history – and not just of humankind.

Volcanic eruptions, solar activities, atmospheric, oceanic and other shifts, as well as anthropogenic behaviour, are fundamental parts of the past and the present.

In this magnificent and groundbreaking book, Frankopan takes us through the origins of our species, discussing the development of religion, language and the bureaucratic state, how growing demands for harvests resulted in the increased shipment of enslaved peoples, and the long and deep history of human efforts to understand and manipulate the weather. All provide lessons of profound importance as we face a precarious future of rapid global warming.

Taking us from the Big Bang to the present day and beyond, The Earth Transformed forces us to reckon with humankind’s continuing efforts to make sense of the natural world.