One of a kind book on environmental history | Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the...

Easy to read and full of history everyone should know | Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World | John Robert McNeill, J.R. McNeill

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	• Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World John Robert McNeill, J.R. McNeill W W Norton & Co Inc, 2000 - 416 pages average customer review:based on 21 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Where we went astray and what we might do about it

Boom. This is a biggie. Yowzah! If you want a clear view of our specie's impact on our world there is no better place to start than here. J.R. McNeill offers a balanced and comprehensive look at the century which changed everything, and his title, contradicting Ecclesiastes' assertion that nothing is new, says it all. The core idea here is that in the last century humanity moved beyond affect of local systems to dominance of the biosphere. We are everywhere. McNeill covers our impact on all of the life on our planet, from his prologue discussion of economy, population and energy, to his deeper analysis of soil, air, water and the whole of living systems. He offers clear views of the demographic and technologic forces which have shaped our modern world. Most illuminating of all are the complicated ways in which each change we have wrought has brought both destruction and remediation. Oil, the number one eco-villain in recent history, particularly when pumped through internal combustion engines, has also cleaned up city air enormously when it replaced coal and wood for heating and power generation. It also eliminated the need to remove 10-15,000 horse carcasses from average large cities each year and saved the great whales from extinction. Nuclear energy, an utter failure economically and with wastes which will be our generation's longest lasting heirloom, at least doesn't pollute the air. Population growth has had enormous impact on environmental damage, but less than I would have estimated as a percentage, and in some places it has even permitted improvements impossible without many hands. We are, in his words, the "rogue primate" which became smart enough to threaten every other life form on the planet, from smallpox virus to blue whales. Our success has paradoxically been very good for the viruses that cause the common cold and for rabbits. From the general to the specific, whole systems to individual tools (automobile, chain saw) McNeill has achieved a grasp of how and what we did, and tells the story masterfully. For readers who took up my recommendation of A GREEN HISTORY OF THE WORLD (Clive Ponting, St. Martin's Press, 1991), this one is better (and Ponting's work is one of McNeill's sources). Bingo.

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One of a kind book on environmental history

I wrote my economics undergraduate thesis on development and environmental management back in 1976-77, and surely I would have enjoyed and valued to have Professor McNeill's book in my hands in those years.

His book is remarkable in many ways. It is a well written book, extraordinarly documented and well supported with eye opening statistical tables and illustrations. His material is useful for graduate and undergraduate students alike, and also for wider audiences interested on reviewing a different approach on history's complexities.

As the book front page indicates, the author centers his work on the 20th century's humankind events, termed by himself as the most influential on the process of ecology's evolution.

The book is very well organized so the reader keeps information organized in a properly way. At the end, Professor McNeill leaves many questions open that will be ample material enough to study in the years to come. Among those questions is the one concerned with society's will to deal seriously with environmental crises that have accumulated on the latest decades. We can have a readily answer to that subject if political leaders continue to privilege the narrow view of economic growth, instead of considering to seriously discuss the implementation of more integral strategies that would deliver environmental friendly sustainable economic development at the end.

Without question I recommend this book.

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Easy to read and full of history everyone should know

This book may be the best historical survey I've ever read. (And with an M.A. in history, I've read a few!) I got this book to complement my hard science slogging on global warming, and found so much more than I hoped for or ever imagined! McNeil's book provides the historical background and the human context for all the graphs and numbers in the science texts. If you're looking for one book to give you a focused overview of just how much human civilization has accomplished, good and bad, in the last 100 years, this is it.

The organization of the book is excellent. McNeil sources everything, ends each chapter with an excellent summary, and wraps it all up with his own thoughtful commentary on climate change. He uses an inspired mix of the small detail (birds dying mid-flight) and the enormous concept (the Aswan dam affected the entire Mediterranean ecosystem). He describes chains of cause and effect and makes connections other historians and scientists seem to miss. The chapters dealing with agriculture are, I think, particularly relevant to our everyday lives; but students in nearly every subject will find this book useful. My husband is a family physician, and has read the sections on public health; my neighbor is a biologist with the USGS, and is reading the chapter on dams and irrigation.

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Thomas Midgley's epitaph

Sub-titled "An Environmental History of the 20th Century", this is a sober and objective survey of environmental changes over the past 100 years. I was concerned this would be an emotional appeal or judgmental polemic from the left - but not the case, it is academic and professional history from an environmental perspective (the environment, not "environmental movement"). It's encyclopedic in scope and style.

I would not call this an "entertaining" read (although some of the facts really fire the synapses), but it is deeply rewarding as a broad survey of a very large and complex problem. The chapters and sub-sections are arranged in a logical outline making it possible to read the chapters in any order.

The main idea of the title "something new under the sun" is that humans have so fundamentally changed the environment that things really are very different now than they have ever been historically. To regard our current conditions of energy availability, access to water, unending economic growth - as enduring and normal appears to be an interesting gamble given the facts.

Some interesting trivia: humans did not become the dominate primate until about 8,000 BC with the rise of agriculture (baboons outnumbered humans before then). About one-fifth of all humans that ever lived did so in the 20th century. In sheer energy terms, if all modern technology and energy sources were not available, the average American would need about 70 human slaves to maintain the current standard of living (each American "directs" 70 energy-slave equivalents). Each year, humans move more earth and soil than glaciers, wind erosion, mountain building (plate tectonic uplift), and volcanoes combined. Probably the single most damaging biological organism in earths history was the human primate Thomas Midgley Jr from Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania born in 1889. He invented Freon (which destroys the Ozone layer), and also leaded gasoline, which has polluted most of the worlds soil lasting thousands of years (all of us carry elevated lead levels because of it and will continue to do so for centuries to come, leading to birth defects, lowered IQs, etc..). Midgley contracted Polio at age 51 and invented a system or ropes and pulleys to move his crippled body off the bed - he became tangled and was strangled to death in 1944 by his own invention, before learning how damaging his inventions were.

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Excellent

This is a must read for people interested in either history, the environment, or people. It is well written and provides an excellent view about the history of the twentieth century that most people do not usually know about. Everyone should read it.

A look at the history of change brought about by and affecting the lives of homo sapiens. Discusses the interdependence of man and nature, contending that adaptability to change and the ability to explore alternatives to the main sources of needed resources will be the key to the survival of mankind. Softcover. DLC: Human ecology--History--20th century.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

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