Though global warming is now on everyone's lips, few are aware of the cataclysmic "Medieval Warming Period" that took place between the years 800 and 1300. Though the causes of this climate change are not as well known as the current global warming, the effects, as systematically described by anthropologist and climate change expert Brian Fagan, were vast: the Mayan empire, dependent on drying mountain reservoirs, collapsed; the Mongols, suffering from drought in the steppes, swept westward; in Europe, warm seasons resulted in new exploration of Greenland and Iceland. Fagan intersperses hard science with imaginative descriptions of how the different cultures reacted to the changes in crops and temperature, creating an evocative history that stirs the reader's curiosity for what lies ahead in our own heated future.

A history of the planet's last global warming phase, which took place between the tenth and fifteenth centuries, traces how climate changes reshaped human societies from the Arctic to the Sahara by bringing abundance to some regions and famines to others, a phenomenon that affected trading routes and population growth. Reprint.

A history of the planet's last global warming phase, which took place between the tenth and fifteenth centuries, traces how climate changes reshaped human societies from the Arctic to the Sahara by bringing abundance to some regions and famines to others, a phenomenon that affected trading routes and population growth. Reprint.