The Earth Transformed - An Untold History
By Peter Frankopan

THE TIMESand BESTand HISTORY BOOK OF 2023A BOOK OF THE YEAR PICK FORand THE TIMES, SUNDAY TIMES, BBC HISTORY MAGAZINE, GUARDIAN, INDEPENDENTand ANDand FINANCIAL TIMESA BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK |and AN INSTANT #2and SUNDAY TIMESand BESTSELLER'Humanity has transformed the Earth: Frankopan transforms our understanding of history'and Financial Times'Vast, learned and timely work'and Sunday Times------From the international bestselling author ofand The Silk Roadsand 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.Inand The Earth Transformed,and Peter Frankopan, one of the world's leading historians, shows that the natural environment is a crucial, if not the defining, factor in global historyand - 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,and The Earth Transformedand forces us to reckon with humankind's continuing efforts to make sense of the natural world.-----'This is epic, gripping, original history that leaps off the page' Sathnam Sanghera, author ofand Empireland'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 HollandA 2023 HIGHLIGHT FOR:and BBC NEWS * SUNDAY TIMES CULTURE * FINANCIAL TIMES * NEW EUROPEAN * GUARDIAN * NEW STATESMAN * THE TIMES * THE WEEK *and WATERSTONESand *and BLACKWELL'S