Nature's Mutiny

Philipp Blom

"The hints of an impending environmental crisis appeared as early as the 1570s, as winters grew colder and crops diminished. By the turn of the seventeenth century, the temperature had plummeted so drastically that Mediterranean harbors were covered with ice, birds were dropping frozen out of the sky, and enterprising Londoners erected semipermanent frost fairs on a frozen Thames--with bustling kiosks, taverns, and even brothels. Chronicling the dramatic turmoil and the long-lasting consequences of this 'Little Ice Age,' best-selling historian Philipp Blom reveals how a new, radically altered Europe emerged out of environmental cataclysm. Showing how the drastic weather patterns decimated entire harvests across the European continent, [this book] describes how populations fled the starvation and civil unrest in the countryside to bourgeoning urban centers, where the emergence of early...