The pace of energy use, greenhouse gas emissions, and population growth has thrust the planet into a new age-the Anthropocene. Humans have altered the planet's biogeochemical systems without consciously managing them. The Great Acceleration explains the causes, consequences, and uncertainties of this massive uncontrolled experiment.
Why did the first civilizations emerge when and where they did? How did Islam become a unifying force in the world of its birth? What enabled the West to project its goods and power around the world from the fifteenth century on? Why was agriculture invented seven times and the steam engine just once?
Thirty years ago, Alfred Crosby published a small work that stressed a simple point - that the most important changes brought on by the voyages of Columbus were not social or political, but biological in nature. This 30th anniversary edition includes a new preface from the author.
Refreshingly unpolemical and at times even witty, McNeill's book brims with carefully sifted statistics and brilliant details.-Washington Post Book World