The Earth Transformed
An Untold History
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Narrated by:
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Peter Frankopan
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By:
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Peter Frankopan
About this listen
A revolutionary new history that reveals how climate change has dramatically shaped the development—and demise—of civilizations across time
Global warming is one of the greatest dangers mankind faces today. Even as temperatures increase, sea levels rise, and natural disasters escalate, our current environmental crisis feels difficult to predict and understand. But climate change and its effects on us are not new. In a bold narrative that spans centuries and continents, Peter Frankopan argues that nature has always played a fundamental role in the writing of history. From the fall of the Moche civilization in South America that came about because of the cyclical pressures of El Niño to volcanic eruptions in Iceland that affected Egypt and helped bring the Ottoman empire to its knees, climate change and its influences have always been with us.
Frankopan explains how the Vikings emerged thanks to catastrophic crop failure, why the roots of regime change in eleventh-century Baghdad lay in the collapse of cotton prices resulting from unusual climate patterns, and why the western expansion of the frontiers in North America was directly affected by solar flare activity in the eighteenth century. Again and again, Frankopan shows that when past empires have failed to act sustainably, they have been met with catastrophe. Blending brilliant historical writing and cutting-edge scientific research, The Earth Transformed will radically reframe the way we look at the world and our future.
*Includes a downloadable PDF of historic maps and global charts from the book, as well as the written acknowledgements
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2023 Peter Frankopan (P)2023 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2023: BBC NEWS, SUNDAY TIMES CULTURE, FINANCIAL TIMES, NEW EUROPEAN, GUARDIAN, NEW STATESMAN, THE TIMES (LONDON), AND THE WEEK
"An essential epic that runs from the dawn of time to, oh, six o’clock yesterday." —Jill Lepore, The New Yorker
"Frankopan shows you how everything fits together...Vast, learned and timely work...The Earth Transformed is Sapiens for grown-ups....It holds lessons for a world grappling with rapid climate change caused by human industry." —Dan Jones, The Sunday Times
"Frankopan has brought all of this scholarly work together into a massive book that is comprehensive, well-informed, and fascinating. It has the intellectual weight and dramatic force of a tsunami....This is an endlessly fascinating book, an easy read on an important issue." —Gerard DeGroot, The Times (London)
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From Joseph Romm, Chief Science Advisor for National Geographic's Years of Living Dangerously series and one of Rolling Stone's "100 people who are changing America," Climate Change offers user-friendly, scientifically rigorous answers to the most difficult (and commonly politicized) questions surrounding what climatologist Lonnie Thompson has deemed "a clear and present danger to civilization."
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Religious not scientific claims and preachings
- By Jeanne Renzo on 09-19-19
By: Joseph Romm
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The Rational Optimist
- How Prosperity Evolves
- By: Matt Ridley
- Narrated by: L. J. Ganser
- Length: 13 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Life is getting better at an accelerating rate. Food availability, income, and life span are up; disease, child mortality, and violence are down all across the globe. Though the world is far from perfect, necessities and luxuries alike are getting cheaper; population growth is slowing; Africa is following Asia out of poverty; the Internet, the mobile phone, and container shipping are enriching people's lives as never before.
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Personal
- By Robert F. Jones on 09-15-17
By: Matt Ridley
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An Edible History of Humanity
- By: Tom Standage
- Narrated by: George K. Wilson
- Length: 10 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Throughout history, food has acted as a catalyst of social change, political organization, geopolitical competition, industrial development, military conflict, and economic expansion. An Edible History of Humanity is a pithy, entertaining account of how a series of changes---caused, enabled, or influenced by food---has helped to shape and transform societies around the world.
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Flawed, but worthwhile
- By Ary Shalizi on 12-28-17
By: Tom Standage
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Collapse
- How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
- By: Jared Diamond
- Narrated by: Michael Prichard
- Length: 27 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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In Jared Diamond’s follow-up to the Pulitzer-Prize winning Guns, Germs and Steel, the author explores how climate change, the population explosion, and political discord create the conditions for the collapse of civilization. Environmental damage, climate change, globalization, rapid population growth, and unwise political choices were all factors in the demise of societies around the world, but some found solutions and persisted.
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Jared Diamond Downs You in Explanation
- By Rob on 07-20-18
By: Jared Diamond
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Apocalypse Never
- Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All
- By: Michael Shellenberger
- Narrated by: Stephen Graybill
- Length: 12 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Michael Shellenberger has been fighting for a greener planet for decades. He helped save the world’s last unprotected redwoods. He co-created the predecessor to today’s Green New Deal. And he led a successful effort by climate scientists and activists to keep nuclear plants operating, preventing a spike of emissions. But in 2019, as some claimed "billions of people are going to die", contributing to rising anxiety, including among adolescents, Shellenberger decided that he needed to speak out to separate science from fiction.
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Environmentalist with integrity!
- By Wayne on 07-01-20
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The Fate of Rome
- Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire
- By: Kyle Harper
- Narrated by: Andrew Garman
- Length: 15 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Interweaving a grand historical narrative with cutting-edge climate science and genetic discoveries, Kyle Harper traces how the fate of Rome was decided not just by emperors, soldiers, and barbarians but also by volcanic eruptions, solar cycles, climate instability, and devastating viruses and bacteria. He takes listeners from Rome's pinnacle in the second century, when the empire seemed an invincible superpower, to its unraveling by the seventh century, when Rome was politically fragmented and materially depleted.
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Interesting and worthwhile
- By B. Coleman on 06-15-19
By: Kyle Harper
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Overheated
- How Climate Change Will Cause Floods, Famine, War, and Disease
- By: Andrew T. Guzman
- Narrated by: Fleet Cooper
- Length: 12 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Deniers of climate change sometimes quip that claims about global warming are more about political science than climate science. They are wrong on the science, but may be right with respect to its political implications. A hotter world, writes Andrew Guzman, will bring unprecedented migrations, famine, war, and disease. It will be a social and political disaster of the first order.
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A must read!
- By Ted on 03-22-15
By: Andrew T. Guzman
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Against the Grain
- A Deep History of the Earliest States
- By: James C. Scott
- Narrated by: Eric Jason Martin
- Length: 8 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Why did humans abandon hunting and gathering for sedentary communities dependent on livestock and cereal grains and governed by precursors of today's states? Most people believe that plant and animal domestication allowed humans, finally, to settle down and form agricultural villages, towns, and states, which made possible civilization, law, public order, and a presumably secure way of living. But archaeological and historical evidence challenges this narrative.
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World without Women
- By Paul Richards on 04-28-18
By: James C. Scott
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Sustainability
- A History
- By: Jeremy L. Caradonna
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 8 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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Caradonna's unique and concise history broadens our understanding of what "sustainability" means, revealing how it progressed from a relatively marginal concept to an ideal that shapes everything from individual lifestyles, government and corporate strategies, and even national and international policy. For anyone seeking understand the history of those striving to make the world a better place to live, here's a place to start.
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Excellent
- By marc grub on 03-06-17
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Disunited Nations
- The Scramble for Power in an Ungoverned World
- By: Peter Zeihan
- Narrated by: Peter Zeihan, Roy Worley
- Length: 16 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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In Disunited Nations, geopolitical strategist Peter Zeihan presents a series of counterintuitive arguments about the future of a world where trade agreements are coming apart and international institutions are losing their power. Germany will decline as the most powerful country in Europe, with France taking its place. Every country should prepare for the collapse of China, not North Korea. We are already seeing, as Zeihan predicts, a shift in outlook on the Middle East: it is no longer Iran that is the region’s most dangerous threat, but Saudi Arabia.
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brilliant geopolitical primer re the future
- By Howard on 04-11-20
By: Peter Zeihan
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A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things
- A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Planet
- By: Raj Patel, Jason W. Moore
- Narrated by: Simon Mattacks
- Length: 6 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Nature, money, work, care, food, energy, and lives: these are the seven things that have made our world and will shape its future. Bringing the latest ecological research together with histories of colonialism, indigenous struggles, slave revolts, and other rebellions and uprisings, Patel and Moore demonstrate that throughout history, crises have always prompted fresh strategies to make the world cheap and safe for capitalism.
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A remarkable exposé & synthesis of the Ponzi scheme that capitalism is and always has been.
- By Scott on 02-10-18
By: Raj Patel, and others
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The Vertical Farm
- Feeding the World in the 21st Century
- By: Dickson Despommier
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 6 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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When Columbia professor Dickson Despommier set out to solve America's food, water, and energy crises, he didn't just think big - he thought up. The vertical farm has excited scientists, architects, and politicians around the globe. These farms, grown inside skyscrapers, would provide solutions to many of the serious problems we currently face.
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Excellent Brainstorming - Not reality
- By Texas Community Project on 01-25-11
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An Absolutely SUPERB Book for Lovers of History
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too easy to confuse with the full version
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Eye-opening, but better as a book - a must-READ
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From the creation of the first encyclopedia to Wikipedia, from ancient museums to modern kindergarten classes—this is Simon Winchester’s brilliant and all-encompassing look at how humans acquire, retain, and pass on information and data, and how technology continues to change our lives and our minds. Throughout this fascinating tour, Winchester forces us to ponder what rational humans are becoming. What good is all this knowledge if it leads to lack of thought? What is information without wisdom?
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Colorful anecdotes but tiring after a while.
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Defenders of the Faith
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Good account of interesting period of history
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too easy to confuse with the full version
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Eye-opening, but better as a book - a must-READ
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Colorful anecdotes but tiring after a while.
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Empires of the Steppes
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The barbarian nomads of the Eurasian steppes have played a decisive role in world history, but their achievements have gone largely unnoticed. These nomadic tribes have produced some of the world’s greatest conquerors: Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan and Tamerlane, among others. Their deeds still resonate today. Indeed, these nomads built long-lasting empires, facilitated the first global trade of the Silk Road and disseminated religions, technology, knowledge and goods of every description that enriched and changed the lives of so many across Europe, China and the Middle East.
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In The Silk Road, Valerie Hansen describes the remarkable archaeological finds that revolutionize our understanding of these trade routes. The Silk Road is a fascinating story of archaeological discovery, cultural transmission, and the intricate chains across Central Asia and China.
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terribly nerrated no intonation and pronounce
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The Age of Wood
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As the dominant species on Earth, humans have made astonishing progress since our ancestors came down from the trees. But how did the descendants of small primates manage to walk upright, become top predators, and populate the world? How were humans able to develop civilizations and produce a globalized economy? Now, in The Age of Wood, Roland Ennos shows for the first time that the key to our success has been our relationship with wood.
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Great text; poor narration
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How the World Made the West
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In How the World Made the West, Josephine Quinn poses perhaps the most significant challenge ever to the “civilizational thinking” regarding the origins of Western culture—that is, the idea that civilizations arose separately and distinctly from one another. Rather, she locates the roots of the modern West in everything from the law codes of Babylon, Assyrian irrigation, and the Phoenician art of sail to Indian literature, Arabic scholarship, and the metalworking riders of the Steppe, to name just a few examples.
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Middling
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Empires of the Sea
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Empires of the Sea tells the story of the 50-year world war between Islam and Christianity for the Mediterranean: one of the fiercest and most influential contests in European history. It traces events from the appearance on the world stage of Suleiman the Magnificent through "the years of devastation" when it seemed possible that Islam might master the whole sea, to the final brief flourishing of a united Christendom in 1571.
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Brilliant detail, exciting story
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Imperial Twilight
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As one of the most potent turning points in the country's modern history, the Opium War has since come to stand for everything that today's China seeks to put behind it. In this dramatic, epic story, award-winning historian Stephen Platt sheds new light on the early attempts by Western traders and missionaries to "open" China even as China's imperial rulers were struggling to manage their country's decline and Confucian scholars grappled with how to use foreign trade to China's advantage.
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Balanced readable narrative about the Opium Wars
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Emperor of the Seas
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Genghis Khan built a formidable land empire, but he never crossed the sea. Yet by the time his grandson Kublai Khan had defeated the last vestiges of the Song empire and established the Yuan dynasty in 1279, the Mongols controlled the most powerful navy in the world. How did a nomad come to conquer China and master the sea? Based on ten years of research and a lifetime of immersion in Mongol culture and tradition, Emperor of the Seas brings this little-known story vibrantly to life.
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Koh-i-Noor
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On 29 March 1849, the 10-year-old Maharajah of the Punjab was ushered into the magnificent Mirrored Hall at the centre of the great Fort in Lahore. There, in a public ceremony, the frightened but dignified child handed over to the British East India Company in a formal act of submission not only swathes of the richest land in India but also arguably the single most valuable object in the subcontinent: the celebrated Koh-i-Noor diamond. The Mountain of Light.
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Fascinating
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Once upon a Prime
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We often think of mathematics and literature as polar opposites. But what if, instead, they were fundamentally linked? In her clear, insightful, laugh-out-loud funny debut, Once Upon a Prime, Professor Sarah Hart shows us the myriad connections between math and literature, and how understanding those connections can enhance our enjoyment of both. As the first woman to hold England’s oldest mathematical chair, Professor Hart is the ideal tour guide, taking us on an unforgettable journey through the books we thought we knew, revealing new layers of beauty and wonder.
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The Infinite Review
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To Run the World
- The Kremlin's Cold War Bid for Global Power
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In this new history of the conflict that defined the postwar era, Sergey Radchenko provides a deep dive into the psychology of the Kremlin's decision-making. He reveals how the Soviet struggle with the United States and China reflected its irreconcilable ambitions as a self-proclaimed superpower and the leader of global revolution. This tension drove Soviet policies from Stalin's postwar scramble for territory to Khrushchev's reckless overseas adventurism and nuclear brinksmanship, Brezhnev's jockeying for influence in the third world, and Gorbachev's failed attempts to reinvent Moscow.
By: Sergey Radchenko
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The Last Emperor of Mexico
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- By: Edward Shawcross
- Narrated by: Gustavo Rex
- Length: 11 hrs and 54 mins
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In the 1860s, Napoleon III, intent on curbing the rise of American imperialism, persuaded a young Austrian archduke and a Belgian princess to leave Europe and become the emperor and empress of Mexico. They and their entourage arrived in a Mexico ruled by terror, where revolutionary fervor was barely suppressed by French troops. When the United States, now clear of its own Civil War, aided the rebels in pushing back Maximilian’s imperial soldiers, the French army withdrew, abandoning the young couple. The regime fell apart.
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Excellent
- By Kyle P. Dalton on 03-24-22
By: Edward Shawcross
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The Middle Kingdoms
- A New History of Central Europe
- By: Martyn Rady
- Narrated by: John Curless
- Length: 22 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
Central Europe has long been infamous as a region beset by war, a place where empires clashed and world wars began. In The Middle Kingdoms, Martyn Rady offers the definitive history of the region, demonstrating that Central Europe has always been more than merely the fault line between West and East. Even as Central European powers warred with their neighbors, the region developed its own cohesive identity and produced tremendous accomplishments in politics, society, and culture.
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Marred by the errors in the modern section
- By Paul Boothroyd on 10-20-23
By: Martyn Rady
What listeners say about The Earth Transformed
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Anonymous User
- 11-29-24
A bit unfocused but comprehensive history lesson
Like many, I was drawn to this after reading silk roads and being interested in climate change and humans’ interactions with it. Overall I thought it was a good read. It covered a lot of ground both geographically and in terms of time. However, it just didn’t seem to have focus and jumped around a bit much. It was hard to make out what his point was at several parts of the book. I would say it was worth the read/listen, but it could have used a little editing
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- Carlos Vidali
- 12-15-23
Comprehensive and balanced review of climate and environment through the ages
It clarified many events of human history and the earth evolution and the insignificance of our journey as a race in the context of the future of the planet.
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1 person found this helpful
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- L.
- 05-20-24
Everyone should read this
Extensively researched, riveting, informative, enlightening. Ah, if all history books were like this! Outstanding work.
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- chetyarbrough.blog
- 06-22-23
HUMANITY'S TRIAL
Peter Frankopan journeys from pre-history to the present to offer perspective on the earth’s global warming crisis. He reviews what is either speculated or known of disastrous world events. Frankopan recalls histories of major volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, tsunamis, droughts, famines, pandemics, and epidemics that have changed the course of history. Frankopan wryly observes global warming is a crisis, but that human life is as likely to end from another cataclysmic natural event or nuclear war as the imminent warming of the world.
One hopes histories past lessons inform a future that includes a place for the youth of this, the next, and future generations. World change brought on by crises have been overcome in the past through human adaptation. It seems reasonable to presume, despite the ignorance of some national leaders, that humanity will survive today’s global warming crisis.
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- Lucy A. Pithecus
- 04-21-23
A Thoughtful History of A Complex Phenomenon
I greatly enjoy this book and feel refreshed by its insightful and innovative interpretations of human social development. It is filled with enchanting stories that we are familiar with but told from different angles.
The author looks at history via a lens of how the climate shapes human behavior at the societal level and the success and unintended consequences of human attempts to change their surroundings. They are intriguing and informative snapshots of different civilizations and cultures in the river of time.
It's a long multi-disciplinary book, for there is no simple way to meaningfully examine and explain the interconnection between human actions and global climate shifts. The narratives cover paleoanthropology, geology, geography, climatology, history, sociology, religion, ecology, science, and all-encompassing.
After this book, if you like its way of peering into human history and want to delve deeper into certain aspects, check out these books from different perspectives (listed by publication time, mostly).
- Climate Crisis - "Speed & Scale: An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now" by John Doerr, Ryan Panchadsaram (2021)
- Finance/Economy - "Money, The True Story of a Made-Up Thing" by Jacob Goldstein (2020)
- Paleoanthropology -"Sapiens, A Brief History of Humankind" by Yuval Noah Harari (2017)
- Early Geography - "Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States" by James C. Scott (2017)
- Biology/Evolution - "The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution" by Richard Dawkins (2009 and a classic)
- Sociology - "Guns, Germs, and Steel, The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared Diamond (1997 and a classic)
- Something to go with a drink - "A History of the World in 6 Glasses" by Tom Standage (2011) (spoiler alert: half of the drinks are alcoholic)
- From the same author (Peter Frankopan, a professor at both Oxford and Cambridge) - "The Silk Road" (2015) and "The New Silk Road" (2018)
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- Big Sur Steve
- 04-24-23
Wow! What a book.
Wow. What a book. I read Peter’s book, Silk Road, and was impressed with Peter’s ability to extract events from human history to weave a fascinating story of cultural development and what events lead to the world we know today.
In his latest book, Earth Transformed, Peter describes how a variety of natural events shaped human history and how humans transformed the planet. I find Peter’s attention to detail impressive as he navigates a variety of naturally occurring phenomena and how they effected human society. Using data from a variety of sources including written human history, geology, climatology, and archaeology Peter is able to fill in the blanks on why cultures rose to power then failed.
Much of human history is guided by climate change, especially volcanic eruptions which cooled the planet leading to lower than expected crop yields and starvation in extreme cases.
The book begins 4.6 billion years ago when the planet was formed, Peter quickly takes the reader through the advent of first life on the planet, then goes into early man. The meat of the book begins with early civilizations about 11,000 years ago and brings the reader forward through a variety of cultures leading up to where we stand today.
While this book is more of a history book, it does leave the reader with where Peter stands on Global Warming. From what I gather, he thinks we are in deep Doo-Doo.
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- Gary
- 12-30-23
The effect of volcanic activity on climate over millennia.
The author consulted amount of world literature, from myth to peer reviewed research. He coordinated global literature that was written in response to specific events, such as volcanic activity, to illustrate effects over larger or smaller geographic and temporal scale. The author’s reading was very good.
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- Desert Reader
- 10-25-23
A Wonderful Explanation
A very well-written explanation of the unrelenting devastation and death that has been, and continues to be, humanity’s only path. The progress and pattern of ecocide is detailed as so predictable that the book can almost seem monotonous at times. Yet, the author skillfully helps us confirm civilized Homo sapiens as an inevitably inept, bureaucratically inclined, greedy, power-hungry, self-infatuated, super predatory species.
A very good book.
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- Douglass
- 07-27-23
Human and natural causes of climate change
A wake up call and overview of the history of climate change and impacts on the world’s civilizations
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- Art
- 05-03-24
Started strong
First 1/4 was quite interesting with multitude of proxies used for an excellent discussion of early earth climate; unfortunately, once reaching the beginning of the renaissance, that ended. The remainder is simply a diatribe against colonialism followed by proxy measurements w/o justification and when actual data is available.
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