The Earth Transformed
An Untold History
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The Earth Transformed
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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
Bloomsbury presents The Earth Transformed written and read by Peter Frankopan.
THE TIMES BEST HISTORY BOOK OF 2023
A BOOK OF THE YEAR PICK FOR THE TIMES, SUNDAY TIMES, BBC HISTORY MAGAZINE, GUARDIAN, INDEPENDENT AND FINANCIAL TIMES
A BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK | AN INSTANT #2 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
'Humanity has transformed the Earth: Frankopan transforms our understanding of history' Financial Times
'Vast, learned and timely work' Sunday Times
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From the international bestselling author of The Silk Roads comes a major history of how a changing climate has dramatically shaped the development—and demise—of civilisations across time.
When we think about history, we rarely pay much attention to the most destructive floods, the worst winters, the most devastating droughts or the ways that ecosystems have changed over time.
In The Earth Transformed, Peter Frankopan, one of the world’s leading historians, shows that the natural environment is a crucial, if not the defining, factor in global history – and not just of humankind. Volcanic eruptions, solar activities, atmospheric, oceanic and other shifts, as well as anthropogenic behaviour, are fundamental parts of the past and the present. In this magnificent and groundbreaking book, we learn about the origins of our species: about the development of religion and language and their relationships with the environment; about how the desire to centralise agricultural surplus formed the origins of the bureaucratic state; about how growing demands for harvests resulted in the increased shipment of enslaved peoples; about how efforts to understand and manipulate the weather have a long and deep history. All provide lessons of profound importance as we face a precarious future of rapid global warming.
Taking us from the Big Bang to the present day and beyond, The Earth Transformed forces us to reckon with humankind’s continuing efforts to make sense of the natural world.
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'This is epic, gripping, original history that leaps off the page' Sathnam Sanghera, author of Empireland
'All Historians aiming to tell a narrative face the problem of when exactly to start it. Only Peter Frankopan would go back 2.5 billion years to the Great Oxidation Event' Tom Holland
A 2023 HIGHLIGHT FOR: BBC NEWS * SUNDAY TIMES CULTURE * FINANCIAL TIMES * NEW EUROPEAN * GUARDIAN * NEW STATESMAN * THE TIMES * THE WEEK * WATERSTONES * BLACKWELL'S
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 Bloomsbury Publishing PlcListeners also enjoyed...
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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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance1 out of 5 stars
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Story2 out of 5 stars
- Anonymous User
- 13-03-23
so disappointed
I have read other books by theis author with great pleasure but this has been like listening to white noise. I'm sure that the research has been meticulous but is it really scholarly to repeatedly cherry puck random facts to support an argument.and then conclude that maybe something happened because of factor a or factor b or factor c or a combination of these things? I'm so sorry to be negative but this was poor.
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14 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- NigelR
- 02-04-23
A serious treatment of the subject
It was interesting to hear the author read it as I felt that I could hear his emotion pick up as he covered topics that really mattered to him. Although , as others have said, it might be a challenging listen for some. However, there is very little entertainment in the subject matter and the detail he covers details finely the absolute crisis we now face. I did not see optimism here, only hefty doses of reality. For a good book, I will frequently listen several times and then buy a paper version to annotate and scribble over. This is a good book, but beware as it catalogues how it ends (probably).
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story2 out of 5 stars
- Ali Richards
- 26-11-23
Facts, science and history with a global reach. What’s not to love?
Wasn’t always sold on Frankopan as a narrator but this is as gripping and revelatory as the wonderful silk roads. Far reaching and shattering in some of the insights. As a nurse I particularly enjoyed his discussion of disease and infection.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- P R
- 23-11-23
An excellent book
Such a great narration of the story of our beautiful planet and the evolution of humanity, geography, economics and historical fact.
I so much enjoyed listening to this book and will definitely refer back to it time after time.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Issy Isaacs
- 11-01-24
Excellent
A fantastic listen a bit confusing but that was probably me atthe start An excellent history of the world with a very worrying end due to climate change. Recommend to anyone.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- toptone
- 11-01-24
Compulsory Reading
Excellent book in the way in brings things together over time, outlining the way things interact and impact human history. Trouble is the people who need to read it, won’t.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- veyza
- 11-09-24
Huge!
This big book of everything tells the whole history of the earth and humanity through an environmental lens.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance1 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- JJ
- 06-05-23
Excellent book poor narration
Fabulous book but Peter Frankopan is a way better author than narrator. Five star book one star narration.
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7 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- simon beale
- 10-04-23
The long lesson of the importance of adaptation
Having read Silk Roads I knew I would be in for a similar epic with The Earth Transformed. The author has a gift for telling stories on a global scale and is pushing that to the limit with this book. I was initially trying to keep track of the shifts and switches between civilisations but found this hard to sustain. This is when I realised it was because I was thinking on too small a scale. This book comes into its own when you widen your conceptual lens and take a truly global view. Settlements, city states and nations are just players on the stage on which this book is set. Examples are not there to tell the story of any one state, empire or peoples, but the wider planetary narrative.
The book is about how the people cope with the story the planet is telling. Humanities fluctuating fortunes when faced with changing climate and environmental conditions is what emerged as the central thread. The imagery of networks and connectivity appears often in the book, time and again these networks were being stress tested by the demands that were placed on it and those that were not able to respond fell, whilst others survived or flourished.
As a history teacher I will now be thinking hard about how to synthesise the messages from this book so that I can put it into my lessons.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Mike
- 07-11-23
Epic story with an ecological perspective
I have read many books describing the history of man and the planet, but this has extraordinary detail from contemporary research on the major influences from meteors to volcanos to solar flares and of course anthropogenic activity…
The reading style is not polished but that did not affect me in the same way as other commentators.
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