The Frigid Golden Age

The Frigid Golden Age PDF

Author: Dagomar Degroot

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2018-02-08

Total Pages: 387

ISBN-13: 1108317588

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Dagomar Degroot offers the first detailed analysis of how a society thrived amid the Little Ice Age, a period of climatic cooling that reached its chilliest point between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. The precocious economy, unusual environment, and dynamic intellectual culture of the Dutch Republic in its seventeenth-century Golden Age allowed it to thrive as neighboring societies unraveled in the face of extremes in temperature and precipitation. By tracing the occasionally counterintuitive manifestations of climate change from global to local scales, Degroot finds that the Little Ice Age presented not only challenges for Dutch citizens but also opportunities that they aggressively exploited in conducting commerce, waging war, and creating culture. The overall success of their Republic in coping with climate change offers lessons that we would be wise to heed today, as we confront the growing crisis of global warming.

The Little Ice Age

The Little Ice Age PDF

Author: Brian Fagan

Publisher: Basic Books

Published: 2019-11-26

Total Pages: 284

ISBN-13: 1541618572

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Only in the last decade have climatologists developed an accurate picture of yearly climate conditions in historical times. This development confirmed a long-standing suspicion: that the world endured a 500-year cold snap -- The Little Ice Age -- that lasted roughly from A.D. 1300 until 1850. The Little Ice Age tells the story of the turbulent, unpredictable and often very cold years of modern European history, how climate altered historical events, and what they mean in the context of today's global warming. With its basis in cutting-edge science, The Little Ice Age offers a new perspective on familiar events. Renowned archaeologist Brian Fagan shows how the increasing cold affected Norse exploration; how changing sea temperatures caused English and Basque fishermen to follow vast shoals of cod all the way to the New World; how a generations-long subsistence crisis in France contributed to social disintegration and ultimately revolution; and how English efforts to improve farm productivity in the face of a deteriorating climate helped pave the way for the Industrial Revolution and hence for global warming. This is a fascinating, original book for anyone interested in history, climate, or the new subject of how they interact.

The Last Pirate

The Last Pirate PDF

Author: Tony Dokoupil

Publisher: Anchor

Published: 2015-01-06

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 0307739481

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A haunting and often hilarious memoir of growing up in 80s Miami as the son of Big Tony, a flawless model of the great American pot baron. To his fellow smugglers, Anthony Edward Dokoupil was the Old Man. He ran stateside operations for one of the largest marijuana rings of the twentieth century. In all they sold hundreds of thousands of pounds of marijuana, and Big Tony distributed at least fifty tons of it. To his son he was a rambling man who was also somehow a present father, a self-destructive addict who ruined everything but affection. Here Tony Dokoupil blends superb reportage with searing personal memories, presenting a probing chronicle of pot-smoking, drug-taking America from the perspective of the generation that grew up in the aftermath of the Great Stoned Age.

The Little Ice Age

The Little Ice Age PDF

Author: Jean M. Grove

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-04-30

Total Pages: 869

ISBN-13: 1134857462

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The evidence for the Little Ice Age, the most important fluctuation in global climate in historical times, is most dramatically represented by the advance of mountain glaciers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and their retreat since about 1850. The effects on the landscape and the daily life of people have been particularly apparent in Norway and the Alps. This major book places an extensive body of material relating to Europe, in the form of documentary evidence of the history of the glaciers, their portrayal in paintings and maps, and measurements made by scientists and others, within a global perspective. It shows that the glacial history of mountain regions all over the world displays a similar pattern of climatic events. Furthermore, fluctuations on a comparable scale have occurred at intervals of a millennium or two throughout the last ten thousand years since the ice caps of North America and northwest Europe melted away. This is the first scholarly work devoted to the Little Ice Age, by an author whose research experience of the subject has been extensive. This book includes large numbers of maps, diagrams and photographs, many not published elsewhere, and very full bibliographies. It is a definitive work on the subject, and an excellent focus for the work of economic and social historians as well as glaciologists, climatologists, geographers, and specialists in mountain environment.

A Cold Welcome

A Cold Welcome PDF

Author: Sam White

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2017-10-16

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 0674981340

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Cundill History Prize Finalist Longman–History Today Prize Finalist “Meticulous environmental-historical detective work.” —Times Literary Supplement When Europeans first arrived in North America, they faced a cold new world. The average global temperature had dropped to lows unseen in millennia. The effects of this climactic upheaval were stark and unpredictable: blizzards and deep freezes, droughts and famines, winters in which everything froze, even the Rio Grande. A Cold Welcome tells the story of this crucial period, taking us from Europe’s earliest expeditions in unfamiliar landscapes to the perilous first winters in Quebec and Jamestown. As we confront our own uncertain future, it offers a powerful reminder of the unexpected risks of an unpredictable climate. “A remarkable journey through the complex impacts of the Little Ice Age on Colonial North America...This beautifully written, important book leaves us in no doubt that we ignore the chronicle of past climate change at our peril. I found it hard to put down.” —Brian Fagan, author of The Little Ice Age “Deeply researched and exciting...His fresh account of the climatic forces shaping the colonization of North America differs significantly from long-standing interpretations of those early calamities.” —New York Review of Books

Nature's Mutiny

Nature's Mutiny PDF

Author: Philipp Blom

Publisher: Pan Macmillan

Published: 2019-03-07

Total Pages: 416

ISBN-13: 1509890424

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Europe where the sun dares scarce appear For freezing meteors and congealed cold.' - Christopher Marlowe In this innovative and compelling work of environmental history, Philipp Blom chronicles the great climate crisis of the 1600s, a crisis that would transform the entire social and political fabric of Europe. While hints of a crisis appeared as early as the 1570s, by the end of the sixteenth century the temperature plummeted so drastically that Mediterranean harbours were covered with ice, birds literally dropped out of the sky, and ‘frost fairs’ were erected on a frozen Thames – with kiosks, taverns, and even brothels that become a semi-permanent part of the city. Recounting the deep legacy and sweeping consequences of this ‘Little Ice Age’, acclaimed historian Philipp Blom reveals how the European landscape had ineradicably changed by the mid-seventeenth century. While apocalyptic weather patterns destroyed entire harvests and incited mass migrations, Blom brilliantly shows how they also gave rise to the growth of European cities, the appearance of early capitalism, and the vigorous stirrings of the Enlightenment. A sweeping examination of how a society responds to profound and unexpected change, Nature’s Mutiny will transform the way we think about climate change in the twenty-first century and beyond.

Loose-leaf Version for Earth's Climate

Loose-leaf Version for Earth's Climate PDF

Author: William F. Ruddiman

Publisher: Macmillan Higher Education

Published: 2013-10-01

Total Pages: 466

ISBN-13: 1464184984

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At a time when the evidence is stronger than ever that human activity is the primary cause for global climate change, William Ruddiman's breakthrough text returns in a thoroughly updated new edition. It offers a clear, engaging, objective portrait of the current state of climate science, including compelling recent findings on anthropogenic global warming and important advances in understanding past climates.

Seaworthy

Seaworthy PDF

Author: T. R. Pearson

Publisher: Three Rivers Press

Published: 2007-06

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 030733595X

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Chronicles the unusual adventures and misadventures of eccentric extreme sportsman William Willis, known for taking lengthy, frequently ill-prepared rafting trips across the major oceans of the world in his sixties and seventies. Reprint. 20,000 first printing.

Alive in Necropolis

Alive in Necropolis PDF

Author: Doug Dorst

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2008-07-17

Total Pages: 448

ISBN-13: 1101014946

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A "dark and funny debut"(Seattle-Times) about a young police officer struggling to maintain a sense of reality in a town where the dead outnumber the living. Colma, California, the "cemetery city" serving San Francisco, is the resting place of the likes of Joe DiMaggio, Wyatt Earp, and William Randolph Hearst. It is also the home of Michael Mercer, a by-the-book rookie cop struggling to settle comfortably into adult life. Instead, he becomes obsessed with the mysterious fate of his predecessor, Sergeant Wes Featherstone, who spent his last years policing the dead as well as the living. As Mercer attempts to navigate the drama of his own daily life, his own grip on reality starts to slip-either that, or Colma's more famous residents are not resting in peace as they should be.

Are We Screwed?

Are We Screwed? PDF

Author: Geoff Dembicki

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2017-01-01

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 1635570786

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A declaration of independence, and a call for systemic change, from the generation that will be most impacted by climate change. If anyone doubted the potential political power of the Millennial generation, Bernie Sanders' campaign put it in the spotlight. Are We Screwed? makes clear that the ardor for change defines this generation, especially when it comes to climate change, and they are willing to consider options that their elders might think naive and impractical, rejecting a capitalism that cares only about profit and a political system riven by false ideology. In telling the stories of his contemporaries around the globe, in describing how they think and the many ways they are already effecting change, Geoff Dembicki documents a historic shift in values and a corresponding re-thinking of how social change can happen.As of this year, the millennial generation (18- to 34-year-olds) will become North America's largest demographic. It is also the generation that has lived with the looming reality of global warming and will be most affected by its impacts. In vividly reported dispatches from Beijing to Paris, from San Francisco to New York, Dembicki examines what millennial responses to climate change look like and how they are shaping our future. He also provides an essential perspective on how climate change is intensifying generational tensions and shifts in society. In the process, a portrait of a generation emerges that goes a long way toward re-branding it in ways that are positive and full of hope for the future.