The Earth Transformed. 13 Weeks, GAYLEY
W 2026

We will follow Peter Frankopan's new book, The Earth Transformed, where he is trying to accomplish three goals: First, to reinsert climate into the story of the past and to show how changes in climate have had an important impact on the world.  Second, to set out the story of human interaction with the natural world over millennia and to look how our species exploited, molded and bent the environment to its will, both for good and for ill. And third, to expand the geographic horizons of how we look at history, beyond the 'global north'.

1. Introduction and Chapters 1 & 2. The world from the dawn of time. On the origins of our species.
2. Chapters 3 & 4. Human interactions with ecologies. The first cities and trade networks 
3. Chapters 5 & 6. On the risks of living beyond one's means. The first age of connectivity. 
4. Chapters 7 & 8. Regarding nature and the divine. The steppe frontier and formation of empires. 
5. Chapters 9 & 10. The Roman warm period. The crisis of late antiquity.
6. Chapters 11 & 12. The golden age of empire. The Medieval warm period.
7. Chapters 13 & 14. Disease and the formation of a new world. On the expansion of ecological horizons.
8. Chapters 15 & 16. The fusion of the old and the new worlds. On the exploitation of nature and people.
9. Chapters 17 & 18. The Little Ice Age. Concerning great and little divergences.
10. Chapters 19 & 20. Industry, extraction and the natural world. The age of turbulence.
11. Chapters 21 & 22. Fashioning new Utopias. Reshaping the global environment.
12. Chapter 23.  The sharpening of anxieties.
13. Chapter 24.  On the edge of ecological limits. Conclusion 

Peter Frankopan: The Earth Transformed - An Untold History. Alfred Knopf - New York, 2023