Rating: 
Summary: Well-written environmental history
Review: McNeill's basic thesis is that in environmental terms, the 20th century has been unprecedented in human history and planetary history in general. He points out that the impact of humankind's breathtaking technological advancements in the last 100 or so years can be likened to a major cataclysm, like an asteroid hitting the planet. The book provides a wealth of background information on a number of major technical/technological developments, and how they have improved the lives of many people but also damaged or imperiled the air, water and soil that sustain all life. McNeill is hardly a Luddite or a primitivist, but he does make some reasonable calls for restraint and, perhaps, a worldwide assessment of where human economic/industrial/technological activities are taking the planet. Interesting in this vein is his consideration, toward the end of the book, of how the economic thought of the last century, with its adherence to the concept of unlimited growth, has played a key role in preventing such an assessment. As he points out, overcoming this way of thinking represents a daunting task, since these (Anglo-American) economic doctrines have assumed the status of irrefutable dogma - like any system of religious beliefs.
Rating:
Summary: Of rats, sharks, and history
Review: Most science writing nowadays must be interdisciplinary; able to use empirical evidence and relevant concepts, theories, and conclusions from vastly different fields of enquiry. Would you expect the same of a history book? Although this book's publishing category is science/environment it really should be history. The author says as much. This is "a history of - and for - environmentally tumultuous times". And that history is broad. From the ancient days when the book of Ecclesiastes was written to our modern era of Nobel Prize winning physicists, there has been a remarkable common conception of our planet as immutable and infinite. In contrast to the biblical gentleman who said there was nothing new under the sun, or physicist Robert Millikan who saw Earth's vastness as effectively shielding it from real harm from humanity, J R McNeill sees SOMETHING NEW UNDER THE SUN and it's simply that "the place of humankind within the natural world is not what it was." Can we link man's history with that of the natural or biological world? Many have tried from both sides of the equation. Great historians and thinkers like Kant, Marx and Pierre Tielhard de Chardin have seen a direction and inevitability about history while Berlin and Popper spoke eloquently against historicism. This book doesn't go there nor does it tackle the attempt by some evolutionary biologists to explain all we see in life as determined at the genetic level. Great scientists from Einstein forward have sought some unifying or final theory and it's still going on. Today sociobiologists, quantum physicists and game theorists say they have the answers. What McNeill contributes to this is his view that "in recent millennia, cultural evolution has shaped human affairs more than biological evolution has. Societies...unconsciously pursue survival strategies of adaptability or of supreme adaptation." The entire book is a brilliant exposition on this point. How mankind, like the rat, was a creature that used adaptability to select for fitness for exploitation of new niches created when short term environmental shocks killed off competition. I say "was" because McNeill convincingly argues that in the 20th century we have tended more towards the strategy of supreme adaptation. Best typified by the shark this is fine-tuned specialization that "is rewarded by continuous success only so long as governing conditions stay the same." The stability required for continued success in this system is based on "stable climate, cheap energy and water, and rapid population and economic growth". Through chapters such as "The Atmosphere: Urban History", "The Hydrosphere: Depletions, Dams and Diversions", "More People, Bigger Cities" and "Fuels, Tools and Economics" he uses tables and data and balanced and thoughtful reasoning to show that these conditions are neither static nor stable, and he effectively makes his pont. His point is not that of a Cassandra warning of an impending environmental apocalypse but something more measured. "We might then consciously choose a world that would require only irksome adaptations on our part and avoid traumatic ones." Couched in these terms his message is much more likely to be read, thought about, and most importantly acted upon. If nothing else McNeill would encourage us to act as the very process itself will "distinguish us from rats and sharks."
Rating:
Summary: excellent
Review: Not a cheerful little story, but McNeill tells it well. We have not been kind to the planet, and if you want the details of our agressive assault on the planetary ecosystem that we depend upon, McNeill lays it all out in black and whate. We have exterminated species, depleted topsoil, sullied our waters supply and warmed the atmosphere to truly dangerous levels. A somewhat less gloomy account of the human impact on the land can be found in Diana Muir's recently puvblished, Reflections in Bullough's Pond. In addition to being a wonderful storyteller, Muir gives some grounds for hope. Muir seems to feel that the record of past human creativity in problem-solving implies that we can solve our environmental problems, too. On the other hand, perhaps McNeill is right in implying that as a species we are capable only of destruction.
Rating:
Summary: The Narrow Road to a Sustainable Future.
Review: She said it was wonderful. It pulls together history including history of the environment as well as I can imagine a book doing, Complete with footnotes that say things like--theory developed by J.R. McNeill, disputed by so-and-so, in whatever. The public health section is especially interesting to me, since my dad was involved in public health for years.
Rating:
Summary: Molly Ivins was right.
Review: She said it was wonderful. It pulls together history including history of the environment as well as I can imagine a book doing, Complete with footnotes that say things like--theory developed by J.R. McNeill, disputed by so-and-so, in whatever. The public health section is especially interesting to me, since my dad was involved in public health for years.
Rating:
Summary: Winner of 2001 World History Association Book Award
Review: The Book Award Committee of the World History Association is pleased to announce that this book is co-winner of its 2001 prize, along with Ken Pomeranz' The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy. Jurors praised both books with words like brilliant, superb, tour de force, and "a classic." Congratulations for an outstanding contribution to "history from a global perspective" in the field of the environment. The prize will be presented at the June meeting of the WHA in Salt Lake City.
Rating:
Summary: Good
Review: This is an interesting book. A good deal of history is concerned with the anecdotal recounting of the exploits of a small number of people. This book is part of the "new idea of history". That is the use of large scale quantitative material to look at larger issues. Prior to 1800 most civilizations in the world depended on muscle power to produce wealth. Societies were generally similar with small elite's dependent on others to produce their wealth. After 1800 the world started to change as energy was used by man to produce wealth. This has continued to change the globe in ways that could never have been anticipated. The world has seen enormous increases in population. Places such as Java had in 1800 populations of around 10 million. The current figure is some 127 million. These increases have occurred throughout the world with patterns of agriculture changing and in Western Countries people living in cities. The book divides the history of the environment into a number of chapters which focus on specific topics. The effect on the water supply of increased irrigation and pollution. There is a chapter on air pollution and how governments have responded to it. The book is reasonably no polemical in an area which can become highly emotive. The affect of some environmental changes such as those to the ozone layer however can have extremely long lasting effects. The current changes to reduce fluro carbons will probably take about 87 years before the ozone levels will return to normal. All in all this book is worth a read. It is interesting as it shows how government in richer countries has been responsive to the threat to the environment but non democratic countries especially in poorer areas will continue to contribute to the environmental problems of the world.
Rating:
Summary: Should be Required Reading
Review: This should be required reading for everyone who is literate. A fascinating, well-researched, well-written and balanced history of the environment in the twentieth century.
Rating:
Summary: Should be Required Reading
Review: This should be required reading for everyone who is literate. A fascinating, well-researched, well-written and balanced history of the environment in the twentieth century.
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