Vendor
	Hanser Friederike Barakat
Original language
German
Categories
Society & Social Sciences History Western philosophy: Enlightenment Earth Sciences, Geography, Environment, Planning Climate change
Weblink
https://www.hanser-literaturverl …

NATURE'S MUTINY

Philipp Blom

How the Little Ice Age of the Long Seventeenth Century Transformed the West and Shaped the Present

An illuminating work of environmental history that chronicles the great climate crisis of the 1600s, which transformed the social and political fabric of Europe.

Philipp Blom, one of the most important historians of our time, tells the story of the emergence of the modern world - a magnificent historical panorama

Long cold winters and short cool summers: In the 17th century the climate in Europe changed dramatically. Grain became scarce, the economy and society staggered into a deep crisis. The Little Ice Age gives us an idea of the severe distortions caused by climate change. People tried to free themselves from their dependence on nature with the help of enlightenment, science and technology. But today, this modern world is reaching its limits because it is provoking another climate catastrophe. Philipp Blom unfolds a magnificent historical panorama in which we recognize the challenges of the present.

Comments

Of all these temperaments, the historian Philipp Blom carries something within himself.

An intriguing chronicle.... A well-written, informative, and fresh look at a relevant and instructive climate disruption and will appeal to readers interested in European and environmental history as well as our own climate challenges.

Intriguing.... this wide-ranging and affectionate portrait of 17th-century Europe has a poetic appeal.

Philipp Blom uses a brilliantly handled narrative technique that allows him to merge life and teaching. The speed of the narrative is high, its density admirable. Philosophical or historical digressions fit in seamlessly with it.

Drawing on rich sources, including diaries, letters, account ledgers, paintings, and religious sermons as well as data gleaned by climate historians and scientists, journalist and translator Blom creates a vivid picture of the European landscape during the Little Ice Age and of social, political, and cultural changes that may have been accelerated by climate change.... An absorbing and revealing portrait of profound natural disaster.

Blom is seeking to give us a larger picture that is relevant to the current moment. His book is about links and associations rather than about definitive proof; it is about networks and shifts in intellectual mood, about correlations as much as causes. Despite that, Blom’s hypothesis is forceful, and has the potential to be both frightening and, if you hold it up to the light at just the right angle, a little optimistic. The idea can be put like this: climate change changes everything.
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Philipp Blom is a cultural journalist in the sense of Hugo von Hofmannsthal: as much a philologist as inevitable, as much world man and historian as necessary.

A beautiful performance: even more such volumes by Philipp Blom about exciting times in Europe, as a reference treasure on the shelf.