Recent reading: David Keys, Catastrophe, 1999. About the shaping of the modern world, by plague and drought and mass migration, triggered by climate change in the sixth century. I think he might be trying too hard, but it's well worth a look. Some useful reminders about the beginnings and rise of Islam, about the 10th-century Jewish empire in the Caucasus, and about the world I think of as post-Roman (and how wrong that thinking is). And some stuff I didn't know about the efficiency of horses.
If you do read it, keep an eye on the footnotes.
Edit: Just for TheTotalM, a footnote: it's pretty grim reading in places. Battles, nasty political mutilations, atrocities, plague. Happy now?
If you do read it, keep an eye on the footnotes.
Edit: Just for TheTotalM, a footnote: it's pretty grim reading in places. Battles, nasty political mutilations, atrocities, plague. Happy now?
VIEW 13 of 13 COMMENTS
I'm back, give or take Reading Festival this weekend.
The picture in the last post several weeks ago is Cattawade btw.
*until the paperback comes out. Sounds a happy book! Overall we as a society have been rather fortunate over the past few hundred years comapred to the degree of climate swings that have effected past human societys. World over population and future climate change will be very unpretty.