The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History 1300-1850

I came across this book titled 'The Little Ice Age' by Brian Fagan more by accident than anything else one afternoon while doing some research for information concerning the effect of disease back in Medieval times. The title intrigued me and so I downloaded it from Amazon to check out and was glad I did.

Mr. Fagan, it seems, is the author or editor of over 46 books, including seven widely used as undergraduate college texts. Prof. Fagan has been an archaeological consultant for many organizations, including National Geographic Society, Time/Life, Encyclopedia Britannica, and Microsoft Encarta so he is definitely credentialed and an informed source. More importantly, he is also an engaging author that is both easy to read while not talking above the lay person at the same time.

This particular effort is divided into four parts. Part One describes the Medieval Warm Period, roughly from 900 to 1200. Parts Two and Three describe how people reacted to the cooling weather, and how devastating climatic changes are for societies whose agriculture is at subsistence level. Part Four covers the end of the Little Ice Age and the sustained warming of modern times. All four parts make for fascinating, sometimes even disturbing reading; and for the reader new to the field Fagan offers the basic explanations of the effects of oceanic currents and air pressure on the climate in Europe. Strangely, however, the story he tells is unerringly reminiscent of the time we live in today. You really cannot read this from cover to cover without looking anew at the world we live in today and how the lessons of the past may become the realities of our future.

Many of my friends have scoffed when it comes to the topic of rapidly changing weather patterns. In point of fact, current U.S. energy and environmental policies seem to be guided by the kind of optimism that "fades in the face of demographic reality.... [I]t's implausible to suggest that famines and massive dislocations of poorer populations will be unaccompanied by civil unrest and disobedience...," the professor warns in his work. "The French Revolution or the Irish potato famine pale into insignificance." The most important lessons for the era of Global Warming may be found in the chill of the middle of the last millennium, if only we know how to read them.