Cataclysms

Cataclysms
Author :
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Total Pages : 471
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780226609263
ISBN-13 : 022660926X
Rating : 4/5 (26X Downloads)

Book Synopsis Cataclysms by : Laurent Testot

Download or read book Cataclysms written by Laurent Testot and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2020-11-09 with total page 471 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Humanity is by many measures the biggest success story in the animal kingdom; but what are the costs of this triumph? Over its three million years of existence, the human species has continuously modified nature and drained its resources. In Cataclysms, Laurent Testot provides the full tally, offering a comprehensive environmental history of humanity’s unmatched and perhaps irreversible influence on the world. Testot explores the interconnected histories of human evolution and planetary deterioration, arguing that our development from naked apes to Homo sapiens has entailed wide-scale environmental harm. Testot makes the case that humans have usually been catastrophic for the planet, “hyperpredators” responsible for mass extinctions, deforestation, global warming, ocean acidification, and unchecked pollution, as well as the slaughter of our own species. Organized chronologically around seven technological revolutions, Cataclysms unspools the intertwined saga of humanity and our environment, from our shy beginnings in Africa to today’s domination of the planet, revealing how we have blown past any limits along the way—whether by exploding our own population numbers, domesticating countless other species, or harnessing energy from fossils. Testot’s book, while sweeping, is light and approachable, telling the stories—sometimes rambunctious, sometimes appalling—of how a glorified monkey transformed its own environment beyond all recognition. In order to begin reversing our environmental disaster, we must have a better understanding of our own past and the incalculable environmental costs incurred at every stage of human innovation. Cataclysms offers that understanding and the hope that we can now begin to reform our relationship to the Earth.


Cataclysms Related Books

Cataclysms
Language: en
Pages: 471
Authors: Laurent Testot
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2020-11-09 - Publisher: University of Chicago Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Humanity is by many measures the biggest success story in the animal kingdom; but what are the costs of this triumph? Over its three million years of existence,
Cataclysms
Language: en
Pages: 223
Authors: Michael R. Rampino
Categories: Science
Type: BOOK - Published: 2017-08-22 - Publisher: Columbia University Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In 1980, the science world was stunned when a maverick team of researchers proposed that a massive meteor strike had wiped the dinosaurs and other fauna from th
Cataclysm!
Language: en
Pages: 651
Authors: D. S. Allan
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 1997-09-01 - Publisher: Simon and Schuster

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Follow this multi-disciplinary, scientific study as it examines the evidence of a great global catastrophe that occurred only 11,500 years ago. Crustal shifting
Cataclysms
Language: en
Pages: 333
Authors: Dan Diner
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2008-01-05 - Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Cataclysms is a profoundly original look at the last century. Approaching twentieth-century history from the periphery rather than the centers of decision-makin
Colonial Cataclysms
Language: en
Pages: 337
Authors: Bradley Skopyk
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2020-04-14 - Publisher: University of Arizona Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The contiguous river basins that flowed in Tlaxcala and San Juan Teotihuacan formed part of the agricultural heart of central Mexico. As the colonial project ro