John L. Brooke is Humanities Distinguished Professor of History at Ohio State University, where he also directs the Center for Historical Research. His books include Columbia Rising: Civil Life on the Upper Hudson from the Revolution to the Age of Jackson (2010), which won the Best Book Prize from the Society of the Historians of the Early American Republic; The Heart of the Commonwealth: Society and Political Culture in Worcester County Massachusetts, 1713–1861 (Cambridge, 1994), which won the Merle Curti Award for Intellectual History from the Organization of American Historians; and The Refiner's Fire: The Making of Mormon Cosmology, 1644–1844 (Cambridge, 1989), which won the Bancroft Prize for American History. He has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Antiquarian Society and the Harvard Charles Warren Center.

'Think of this as travel writing of the highest order. A rough journey for mankind becomes a stimulating armchair adventure for the reader. This is big history, framed by big ideas but anchored in the very recent explosion of knowledge about climate through the ages and about our history and prehistory. Brooke skillfully navigates the interpretive hazards of proxy paleoclimate data. In Brooke's persuasive account, our evolution to modernity is not absolutely determined by climate and disease, but it has been substantially influenced by them. Our new knowledge shows that quite often these influences abruptly change course, and Brooke shows that much of our history is a consequence of societies scrambling to adjust.' Mark A. Cane, G. Unger Vetlesen Professor of Earth and Climate Sciences, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University

• Introduction: growth, punctuation, and human well-being; Part I. Evolution and Earth Systems: 1. The court jester on the platform of life; 2. Human emergences; Part II. Domestication, Agriculture, and the Rise of the State: 3. Agricultural revolutions; 4. The Mid-Holocene and the urban-state revolution; 5. Human well-being from the Pleistocene to the rise of the state; Part III. Ancient and Medieval Agrarian Societies: 6. Stasis and growth in the epoch of agrarian empires; 7. Optimum and crisis in early civilization, 3000–500 BC; 8. A global antiquity, 500 BC–AD 542; 9. The global dark and middle ages, AD 542–AD 1350; Part IV. Into the Modern Condition: 10. Climate, demography, economy, and polity in the late medieval-early modern world, 1350–1700; 11. Global transformations: atlantic origins, 1700–1870; 12. Launching modern growth: 1870 to 1945; 13. Growth beyond limits: 1945 to present; Coda. A rough journey into an uncertain future.

John L. Brooke is Humanities Distinguished Professor of History at Ohio State University, where he also directs the Center for Historical Research. His books include Columbia Rising: Civil Life on the Upper Hudson from the Revolution to the Age of Jackson (2010), which won the Best Book Prize from the Society of the Historians of the Early American Republic; The Heart of the Commonwealth: Society and Political Culture in Worcester County Massachusetts, 1713–1861 (Cambridge, 1994), which won the Merle Curti Award for Intellectual History from the Organization of American Historians; and The Refiner's Fire: The Making of Mormon Cosmology, 1644–1844 (Cambridge, 1989), which won the Bancroft Prize for American History. He has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Antiquarian Society and the Harvard Charles Warren Center.

'Think of this as travel writing of the highest order. A rough journey for mankind becomes a stimulating armchair adventure for the reader. This is big history, framed by big ideas but anchored in the very recent explosion of knowledge about climate through the ages and about our history and prehistory. Brooke skillfully navigates the interpretive hazards of proxy paleoclimate data. In Brooke's persuasive account, our evolution to modernity is not absolutely determined by climate and disease, but it has been substantially influenced by them. Our new knowledge shows that quite often these influences abruptly change course, and Brooke shows that much of our history is a consequence of societies scrambling to adjust.' Mark A. Cane, G. Unger Vetlesen Professor of Earth and Climate Sciences, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University

• Introduction: growth, punctuation, and human well-being; Part I. Evolution and Earth Systems: 1. The court jester on the platform of life; 2. Human emergences; Part II. Domestication, Agriculture, and the Rise of the State: 3. Agricultural revolutions; 4. The Mid-Holocene and the urban-state revolution; 5. Human well-being from the Pleistocene to the rise of the state; Part III. Ancient and Medieval Agrarian Societies: 6. Stasis and growth in the epoch of agrarian empires; 7. Optimum and crisis in early civilization, 3000–500 BC; 8. A global antiquity, 500 BC–AD 542; 9. The global dark and middle ages, AD 542–AD 1350; Part IV. Into the Modern Condition: 10. Climate, demography, economy, and polity in the late medieval-early modern world, 1350–1700; 11. Global transformations: atlantic origins, 1700–1870; 12. Launching modern growth: 1870 to 1945; 13. Growth beyond limits: 1945 to present; Coda. A rough journey into an uncertain future.

John L. Brooke is Humanities Distinguished Professor of History at Ohio State University, where he also directs the Center for Historical Research. His books include Columbia Rising: Civil Life on the Upper Hudson from the Revolution to the Age of Jackson (2010), which won the Best Book Prize from the Society of the Historians of the Early American Republic; The Heart of the Commonwealth: Society and Political Culture in Worcester County Massachusetts, 1713–1861 (Cambridge, 1994), which won the Merle Curti Award for Intellectual History from the Organization of American Historians; and The Refiner's Fire: The Making of Mormon Cosmology, 1644–1844 (Cambridge, 1989), which won the Bancroft Prize for American History. He has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Antiquarian Society and the Harvard Charles Warren Center.

'Think of this as travel writing of the highest order. A rough journey for mankind becomes a stimulating armchair adventure for the reader. This is big history, framed by big ideas but anchored in the very recent explosion of knowledge about climate through the ages and about our history and prehistory. Brooke skillfully navigates the interpretive hazards of proxy paleoclimate data. In Brooke's persuasive account, our evolution to modernity is not absolutely determined by climate and disease, but it has been substantially influenced by them. Our new knowledge shows that quite often these influences abruptly change course, and Brooke shows that much of our history is a consequence of societies scrambling to adjust.' Mark A. Cane, G. Unger Vetlesen Professor of Earth and Climate Sciences, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University

• Introduction: growth, punctuation, and human well-being; Part I. Evolution and Earth Systems: 1. The court jester on the platform of life; 2. Human emergences; Part II. Domestication, Agriculture, and the Rise of the State: 3. Agricultural revolutions; 4. The Mid-Holocene and the urban-state revolution; 5. Human well-being from the Pleistocene to the rise of the state; Part III. Ancient and Medieval Agrarian Societies: 6. Stasis and growth in the epoch of agrarian empires; 7. Optimum and crisis in early civilization, 3000–500 BC; 8. A global antiquity, 500 BC–AD 542; 9. The global dark and middle ages, AD 542–AD 1350; Part IV. Into the Modern Condition: 10. Climate, demography, economy, and polity in the late medieval-early modern world, 1350–1700; 11. Global transformations: atlantic origins, 1700–1870; 12. Launching modern growth: 1870 to 1945; 13. Growth beyond limits: 1945 to present; Coda. A rough journey into an uncertain future.