The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History, 1300-1850 | 
 enlarge | Author: Brian M. Fagan
Publisher: Basic Books
Category: Book
List Price: $16.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  57 reviews
Sales Rank: 30658
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 272
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.1 x 0.7
ISBN: 0465022723
Dewey Decimal Number: 551.694
EAN: 9780465022724
ASIN: 0465022723
Publication Date: December 2001
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Amazon.com
"Climate change is the ignored player on the historical stage," writes archeologist Brian Fagan. But it shouldn't be, not if we know what's good for us. We can't judge what future climate change will mean unless we know something about its effects in the past: "those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it." And Fagan's story of the last thousand years, centered on the "Little Ice Age," reminds us of what we could end up repeating: flood, fire, and famine--acts of God exacerbated by acts of man. For all that he takes a broad--a very broad--view of European history, Fagan's writing is laced with human faces, fascinating anecdotes, and a gift for the telling detail that makes history live, very much in the style of Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror. When Fagan talks about the voyages of Basque fishermen to American shores (probably landing before Columbus sailed), he puts in the taste of dried cod and the terrifying suddenness of fogs on the Grand Banks. The Great Fire of London, what it was like when the Dutch dikes broke, the Irish Potato Famine, the year without a summer, ice fairs on the Thames, and volcanoes in the South Pacific--Fagan makes history a ripping yarn in which we are all actors, on a stage that has always been changing. --Mary Ellen Curtin
Product Description
The Little Ice Age tells the story of the turbulent, unpredictable, and often very cold years of modern European history, how this altered climate affected historical events, and what it means for today's global warming. Building on research that has only recently confirmed that the world endured a 500year cold snap, renowned archaeologist Brian Fagan shows how the increasing cold influenced familiar events from Norse exploration to the settlement of North America to the Industrial Revolution. This is a fascinating book for anyone interested in history, climate, and how they interact.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 52 more reviews...
 imbalance May 8, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Interesting with several unique approaches. The problem for me rests with his intricate explanations of causes of climate changes from North Atlantic Oscillation,Sun spots,solar flares, ocean currents, polar melting, volcanoes. methane release, and a host of other causes. Yet,he speaks in unsubstantated conviction that todays warming is due to mans fossil fuel use. Then he concludes with "The Little Ice Age reminds us that climate change is inevitable, unpredictable, and sometimes vicious.I would ask him does he believe this is really caused by man?
Must Read March 12, 2008
Since Climate Change is now all the rage, and many partisans have taken decidely striden sides, this book may be a bit controversal. Dr Fagan is niether an Earth Scientist nor a Climatologist. However,he is a well known anthropologist with a decided interest in how Climate Change affects civilizations and individuals. This book was written for the layman and not for the professional climatologist.
This book focuses mainly on how Climate Change -namely a cooling climate- wrought misery and hardship to the Europeans. The period 1315 to 1860 has been dubbed the Little Ice Age (LIA). The main thesis of The Little Ice Age is that a cooling climate does not just bring colder temperatures, but an entire host of extreme weather events(floods, droughts, scorching summers, as well as frigid winters). Unlike the Medieval Warm Period), where the climate was more or less very warm and tranquil (mild winters, hot summers, occaisonal rains), the Little Ice produced an entire spectrum of disasterous weather phenomenon. Dr Fagan gives plenty of charts, and graphs to butress his arguments. His focus is primairily on the North Atlantic Oscillation (a weather oscillation that controls the prevailing winds and storm track for much of Europe and the Atlantic. He also takes advantage of forensic meterologists from Oxford who, using ships logs, were able to recreate synoptic weather patterns for much of the Atlantic and North Sea during this time period.
Dr Fagan's biggest success in this book is to write in vivid deatil the affect of the Little Ice on the individual. He recounts the histroy of the Great Famine (1315-1321), the catastrophic advanced of the Alpine Glaciers, the plight of the Norwiegian settlers in Greenland, as well as the role of climate in political affairs (The Spanish Armada, and French Revolution). As an anthropologist, Fagan's main concern is how humans lived and suffered during this period, and to his credit, he dug through farm journals, diaries, and mountains of forgotten documents to paint a very real narrative. Ultimately Climate Change is not about abstractions such as Principle Component Analysis or radiative forcing equations, but how it effects the individual. This book, paints in detail a tapestry of human suffering brought about by a cooling climate.
This book predates the partisan bickery over Dr Mann's Hockey Stick graph. This is important as Mann -a professional climate scientist- argues that the Little Ice Age and the Medieval Warm Period were only local events to Europe. Mann's famous temperature reconstruction has, however, come under severe scrutiny from professional statisticians in recent years. Despite its fall from grace, many climatologists still abide by the conclusions of the Hockey Stick. As a result, many people will dismiss Dr Fagan's book as mere ancedotal evidence done by a non-professional.
The biggest flaw in this book is that it was Eurocentric. Dr Fagan does extend his studies briefly into North America and New Zealand, where he gives evidence of the Little Ice Age in colonial times, as well as providing refrences to growth of New Zealand's Franz Joef Glacier from 1400-1850. The other flaw is the repitition. Readers may find his constant references to this drought or that famine a bit tedious. However, others may find that these repetions in detailing of human suffering only reinforce his thesis that cooling climate is very unhosptibale.
Overall, this book was written for a layman. I think the reader should also buy his other book The Great Warming, and read them back to back. Both books serve as a good reference point when examining the human implications of Climate Change.
Facinating Look at the Past January 10, 2008
While doing research for a school project, my son checked this book out of the library. When he was done, and before it needed to be returned, I decided to read it. It was time well spent.
Contents:
Preface
Acknowledgments
Author's Note
Part One: Warmth and Its Aftermath
Part Two: Cooling Begins
Part Three: The End of the "Full World"
Part Four: The Modern Warm Period
Notes
Index
Brian Fagen's, The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History, 1300 to 1850, takes the reader to a specific period in time, during a significant climatic event. It is, arguably, the most important environmental in the last thousand years and one that may predict future events (even the current "climatic change"). Fagan, an archeologist, fleshes out the story using personal diaries, contemporary sources, and manual temperature and climate records. Adding current data, provided by a wide variety of sources, including analysis of ice cores and leading historians, he is able to present a very readable and interesting book on the effects of a major climate change on the population of the Earth (this not only includes humans, but also fish and animals).
I think when you mention "global warming" or "climate change" in this day, most people think of rising temperatures. That is only a part of how the environment changes. In the period described in the book, you had areas that experienced extreme cold, scorching summers, and increased volcanic activities. All of these factor contributed to how humans interacted with each other and nature. One interesting fact was that the cod fisheries, very important to the time period, couldn't continue to live in the eastern Atlantic and moved to the western Atlantic. The effect was catastrophic to the known world. But what it brought was determined fisherman to the New World, following the cod, including the Pilgrims. Wild swings in temperature also meant that subsistence farmers weren't prepared for a season, or more, of bad crops. Some societies relied on one basic foodstuff. And when that crop crashed, you had the Irish Potato famine, the worst famine Ireland had ever seen. Another offshoot of the Little Ice Age was the development and use of technology and farming methods. While the English were able to adapt to new farming methods and techniques, the French didn't adapt at all. Fagan argues that this led to social breakdown and revolution in that country. All of this leads to Fagan's research to suggest that the current issues facing humanity started in 1850, when the American colonialists started cutting down trees and burning them, throwing large amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. He finishes by saying the global warming only increases the wild swings in climate, making world weather extremely unpredictable to predict.
No matter your thoughts on climate change, or global warming, this was a fascinating look at not only the weather during a specific timeframe, but also how the affected societies functioned. Fagan, drawing on contemporary writings and his access to historians, is able to weave an incredible narrative of the time. He has a nice ability to bring history alive and to present scientific findings in a very understandable manner. While the title may seem dry or uninteresting, the writing is not. It may not be part your normal reading, but the Notes are a wonderful look into Fagan's sources, some of them quite amazing.
Excellent Little History December 22, 2007
Well written and informative, THE LITTLE ICE AGE is an approachable book on climate change and its effect on European history.
 Dogged by repetition, plagued by inconsistency December 11, 2007
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
The author would have done well to refrain from extensive repetition of facts for in the end their use results in inconsistencies and make for annoying reading. The author probably refers to the great famine and the dates associated with the famine 500 times in different contexts. One is left with the impression that there were some scorching summers, some frigid ones, some dry ones, some rainy ones, etc. In the end one can not really discern what the weather was like during those years and how it contributed to the famine. The inconsistencies diminish the authors otherwise laudable attempts to show patterns of climate change and weather that influenced culture and civilization. A fascinating topic, but poorly executed book.
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