So interesting!
I am interested in climate and history anyway (this book has a decent amount of overlap with Jared Diamond's Collapse!) but this is so well written I stayed up late three nights in a row to read more. The first couple of pages are silly, but it immediately settles down in to super interesting writing about how we can possibly know about the weather in the middle ages. I didn't think I'd be so interested in knowing what the North Atlantic Oscillation is, but I am!
Fagan acknowledges that it's never ONLY climate that drives world history, but his very lucid explanation about how outdated farming techniques, drought, and late frosts caused the bread riots that sparked the French Revolution was the single clearest explanation of that I've ever found.
Seriously. I wish it had been longer.
Grade: B
Originally published 2009
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