amazing happenings, potatoes, bread, advancement of culture and technology and going into mormon pioneer era ( )

After the amazing warm period of the 13th century, climate change had a profound effect on human behavior and well-being. Brian Fagan takes us step by step through the cold, unsettled, rainy, dry, hot and otherwise completely unpredictable years of the Little Ice Age, when the subsistence farmers of Europe and elsewhere suffered repeated bad harvests and terrible privations. He is blunt, and after the description of life in the 1300s and 1400s, I was consumed with empathy for these people who had to live through such uncertain times.

Starting in the early 1300s, weather became increasingly destructive to farming, with repeated cold spells, drenching rains and unexpected droughts. Fagan takes us all the way through to the 1800s and the blistering Irish famine that pushed so many to emigrate or die. In between, he notes the persistent rain in the 14th and 15th centuries that turned farmlands and pasturelands to seas of mud and certainly contributed to the outcomes of battles (for instance, Agincourt) as well as privation. He notes calamity in the New World as well, as early settlers in North America fought to live through one of the coldest winters of the age, the Incan Empire and other indigenous societies were ruined by drought, volcanic eruptions blocked the sun, and the Thames froze solid.

And of course, he ends the age with our own interference in climate. This book, published in 2000, is cautious about laying all the global warming at our feet, citing other contributing possibilities. But his description of one possible outcome is literally chilling, as fresh water melt covers the north end of the Gulf Stream and shuts off the downwelling of that great warm river in the sea. Once we scorch the Earth, another Ice Age may come again. ( )

This was a very good, informative book. ( )

Brian Murray Fagan is a successful British author of archaeology books. He attended his studies in archaeology and anthropology at the Cambridge University, where he obtained a Bachelor, Master and PhD degree on the subjects. In 1967 he was appointed Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, in Santa Barbara. Fagan started writing books about historical and archaeological subjects in 1972, with the aim to attract also non-specialists to the topic. Among his works, Fagan also wrote the book The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History, 1300–1850, published in the year 2000.

His book gives a comprehensive overview of the whole period known as “the little ice age,” by briefly explaining the social and environmental context of the High medieval period (11th century), when the Norse Leif Erikson fist landed on the shores of the New World, until the more recent mid-20th century. The geographical focus is primarily laid on central and northern Europe spanning from the Alps to Scandinavia, with some sporadic mentions of North America and impactful volcanic eruptions in the southern hemisphere. The main subject of the book is the climate and its direct consequences on the livelihood of the European society throughout the centuries of “the little ice age.”

In his work Fagan states that his goal is not to sustain the concept of the environmental determinism, but rather to highlight the strength of climate shifts on an unprepared society heavily relying on an agriculture of subsistence. In the book are described various instances of climatic instability, which brought large parts of the European population to suffer famines and waves of pandemic illnesses, such as the plague, until the 20th century. Famine, as Fagan explains it is the product of overpopulation, climate evolution and the lack of know-how to cope with it.

This whole description and explanation of the vulnerability of the human existence in front of sudden climatic shifts could be interpreted as a detailed and well explained introduction to the last chapter. Here the author cleverly hijacks the attention of the reader on the current climate crisis, leaving the historical subject behind. He states that it does not matter how technologically advance we are, because in the world several millions people still survive though subsistence agriculture, and if we can learn something from “the little ice age,” is that even little changes in the climatic conditions, of 1-2° Celsius, can have disastrous effects on humanity.

Fagan support his claims with scientific and historical studies. Mechanisms of natural phenomena and their effects, which can result in warmer or colder atmospheric temperatures, such as the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) or El Niño and La Niña are explained. However, sometimes even with the explanation it can still be difficult to follow the train of thoughts without having the necessary background knowledge on these phenomena. This is not, necessarily a negative point since it can induce the reader to expand his/her knowledge on the topic.

Overall, I think that this is a very interesting reading to broaden ones knowledge about the relation between our society and the climate, which for centuries has directly or indirectly dictated the wellbeing or misery of the European society during the last millennia. Stylistically speaking, this work is a well-structured, mostly streamlined, and enjoyable reading, which starts far away and ends punching firmly on our reality. ( )

not very well written. very repetitive. this book actually contains very much less information than its size warrants.