The Great Warming cover art

The Great Warming

Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations

 Preview

£0.00 for first 30 days

Try for £0.00
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

The Great Warming

By: Brian Fagan
Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
Try for £0.00

£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £18.99

Buy Now for £18.99

Confirm Purchase
Pay using card ending in
Switch payment method
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.
Cancel

About this listen

A breakout best seller on how the earth's previous global warming phase reshaped human societies from the Arctic to the Sahara.

From the 10th to the 15th centuries, the earth experienced a rise in surface temperature that changed climate worldwide, a preview of today's global warming. In some areas, including Western Europe, longer summers brought bountiful harvests and population growth that led to cultural flowering. In the Arctic, Inuit and Norse sailors made cultural connections across thousands of miles as they traded precious iron goods. Polynesian sailors, riding new wind patterns, were able to settle the remotest islands on earth. But in many parts of the world, the warm centuries brought drought and famine. Elaborate societies in western and Central America collapsed, and the vast building complexes of Chaco Canyon and the Mayan Yucatn were left empty.

The history of the Great Warming of a half millennium ago suggests that we may yet be underestimating the power of climate change to disrupt our lives today - and our vulnerability to drought, writes Fagan, is the silent elephant in the room.

©2009 Brian Fagan (P)2010 Audible, Inc. Atmospheric Science Civilization Earth Sciences Ancient History Western Europe Famine Polar Region Sailing
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2

Listeners also enjoyed...

 The Attacking Ocean cover art
The Little Ice Age cover art
Climate Chaos cover art
First Peoples in a New World cover art
The Sloth Lemur’s Song cover art
Humans versus Nature cover art
World Prehistory cover art
Once and Future Giants cover art
Big Ratchet cover art
1493 for Young People cover art
Unbound cover art
Water in Plain Sight cover art
Uruk cover art
Bison and People on the North American Great Plains cover art
Tree Story cover art
The Sahara: The History and Legacy of the World’s Greatest Desert cover art

Critic reviews

“Brian Fagan offers a unique contribution to this discussion [of climate change]...Readers should not underestimate this book, writing it off as another addition to a burgeoning genre: the travel guide to a torrid world. Fagan’s project is much bigger. He re-creates past societies in a lively and engaging manner, aided by his expert synthesis of obscure climatological data...In his ability to bring nature into our global, historical narratives, Fagan rivals...scholars who revealed to large audiences the explanatory power of microscopic biota or gross geography. Fagan promises to do the same for longterm climate dynamics...We would be fools to ignore his warnings.” ( American Scholar)

What listeners say about The Great Warming

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    4
  • 4 Stars
    1
  • 3 Stars
    1
  • 2 Stars
    1
  • 1 Stars
    0
Performance
  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    4
  • 4 Stars
    1
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Story
  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    4
  • 4 Stars
    1
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Audible.co.uk reviews

Amazon reviews
Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
Profile Image for pj

well researched

A fascinating piece of research and valuable history lesson.
Maybe some of the chapter introductions are a bit flowery/misplaced and certainly the endless unit conversions (metres/miles/acres etc etc) don't work well in the audio book.
The conclusion is simply mind-blowing in its self-contradictory rampant alarmism with added confusion between computer model outputs and actual reality. It really does set a gold standard for verbal diarrhoea but thankfully it's relatively brief.

Report this

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful