Brian M. Fagan

"World Prehistory: The Basics tells the compelling story of human prehistory, from our African origins to the spectacular pre-industrial civilizations and cities of the more recent past. Written in a non-technical style by two archaeologists and experienced writers about the past, the story begins with human origins in Africa some 6 million years ago and the spread of our remote ancestors across the Old World. Then we return to Africa and describe...

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 500-year cold snap, renowned archaeologist Brian Fagan shows how the increasing cold influenced familiar events from Norse exploration to the settlement...

Looks at the early development of navigation, examining how ancient humans discovered the secrets of wind, tides, and stars that allowed them to make long voyages that profoundly changed human civilization.

"Man-made climate change may have began in the last two hundred years, but humankind has witnessed many eras of climate instability. The results have not always been pretty: once-mighty civilizations felled by pestilence and glacial melt and drought. But we have one powerful advantage as we face our current crisis: history. The study of ancient climates has advanced tremendously in the past ten years, to the point where we can now reconstruct seasonal...

A history of climate change describes the dramatic evolution and stabilization of the oceans before the rise of humans approximately 6,000 years ago, tracing a significant rise in global temperatures since 1860 and how a rising sea level is affecting world populations. By the best-selling author of The Great Warming.

The story of our most vital resource, and how it has shaped the history of every human society, spans five millennia, from ancient Mesopotamia to the parched Sun Belt, from ancient Rome, whose mighty aqueducts still supply modern cities, to China, where emperors marshaled armies of laborers in a centuries-long struggle to tame powerful rivers. Anthropologist Fagan sets out three ages of water: In the first, lasting thousands of years, water was scarce--so...