The Earth Transformed

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From the international bestselling author of The Silk Roads comes a major history of how a changing climate has dramatically shaped the development-and demise-of civilisations across time.

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, 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, we learn about the origins of our species: about the development of religion and language and their relationships with the environment; about how the desire to centralise agricultural surplus formed the origins of the bureaucratic state; about how growing demands for harvests resulted in the increased shipment of enslaved peoples; about how efforts to understand and manipulate the weather have a long and deep history. 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.

Review

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

[Frankopan] succeeds in mastering a seemingly impossible challenge, distilling an immense mass of historical sources, scientific data and modern scholarship that span thousands of years and the entire globe into an epic and spellbinding story. Humanity has transformed the Earth: Frankopan transforms our understanding of history ― Financial Times

This is epic, gripping, original history that leaps off the page. I wanted to buy everyone I know a copy -- Sathnam Sanghera

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

Vast, learned and timely work ― Sunday Times

A dazzling compendium of global research . . . The value of this book is as an act of deep understanding, recognising not only scientifically but culturally and philosophically that we are epiphenomena - not dominators of the Earth but products of it -- Adam Nicolson ― Spectator

The Earth Transformed is an epic masterpiece. There are many 'big ideas' books out there, but often are beset by wafer-thin scholarship, and few stand up to scrutiny. This absolutely does. It's a book for the ages, and I cannot recommend it enough -- Adam Rutherford

[Frankopan] has attempted successfully, and deftly, what few others have and provided an overarching perspective of the way climatic events and trends, geography and human opportunism have intertwined and defined Homo sapiens' relationship with the planet ― Geographical

The Earth Transformed makes a major contribution to raising awareness and concern, and hopefully will reach those decision makers, in the political and commercial spheres, who might have the power and means to do something about it. In many ways, this fascinating and thoughtful book's lack of an overt political message-and its clear focus on the lessons we can learn from past civilisations and their response to climate change-make it all the more powerful a weapon, for which Prof Frankopan deserves credit and thanks ― Country Life

Importantly, Frankopan shows our modern concerns about the environment are no modish fad: they were shared by ancient thinkers and leaders. Anyone with an interest in building a more sustainable world would do well to read his book ― New Scientist

Peter Frankopan reveals how our lives have been shaped by environmental changes since the emergence of Homo sapiens in this sweeping, riveting study ― Observer

Extraordinary . . . a work of vast scholarship. This is the first wide-ranging account of humanity's relationship with the natural world - both climate and environment . . . If this book does not make us think, then nothing will. The Earth Transformed could hardly be more timely -- Sir Antony Beevor ― Daily Mail

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.

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