THE LONG SUMMER: How Climate Changed Civilization

Basic Books , 2003. 1st Edition 1st Printing. Hardcover. Fine/Very Good. Octavo, hardcover, fine, clean and unmarked, in VG orange pictorial dj with hint of wear at top edge. 284 pp. including index. For more than a century we've known that much of human evolution occurred in an Ice Age. Starting about 15,000 years ago, temperatures began to rise, the glaciers receded, and sea levels rose. The rise of human civilization and all of recorded history occurred in this warm period, known as the Holocene.Until very recently we had no detailed record of climate changes during the Holocene. Now we do. In this engrossing and captivating look at the human effects of climate variability, Fagan shows how climate functioned as what the historian Paul Kennedy described as one of the "deeper transformations" of history--a more important historical factor than we understand.