Rating: 
Summary: Floods, Famines, and Emperors
Review: This was a wonderful treatment of the effects of weather/climate on ancient civilizations. I found the thesis rather intriguing, as I had not considered how compelling might be the effects of major changes in the weather regime on a culture. One is quite aware of local effects of the weather, especially when it is severe. The news media make the statistics of every flood, hurricaine and draught the subject of international interest. Certainly the effects of major climatic disasters like the 7 lean years of the Bible and the Dust Bowl years of US history are familiar. Professor Fagan makes clearer the political and social impact of El Ninos world wide in antiquity as well.
Rating: 
Summary: Good to read; a nice beginning
Review: To be honest, I enjoyed this book far more than I anticipated. Fagan is a smart archaelogist, and does not reduce human history to weather; rather he shows how weather can influence politics, religion, agriculture, and economics. Fagan could have made this point more clearly: weather can sometimes be influential; it's not determinative.Fagan offers a good direction for archaelogists and historians to head; more serious works would do well to take up Fagan's challenge to analyze historical weather patterns. It'll be a tough go, but well-worth the trouble. One of the book's strongest chapters is Chapter 11, showing how French colonial rule in the Sahel helped to impoverish and starve peoples living there, while increasing desertification. Here, he echoes the theme of the vastly superior _Late Victorian Holocausts: El Nino and the Making of the Third World_. This latter book, by Mike Davis, is one of the most important books of recent decades. Where Fagan fails to consider structural inequalities and human suffering as a result of El Ninos, Davis fully succeeds. The books make for some nice contrasts (I assigned both to my college students). Turn to Davis, after you've had fun with Fagan.
Rating:
Summary: Good to read; a nice beginning
Review: To be honest, I enjoyed this book far more than I anticipated. Fagan is a smart archaelogist, and does not reduce human history to weather; rather he shows how weather can influence politics, religion, agriculture, and economics. Fagan could have made this point more clearly: weather can sometimes be influential; it's not determinative. Fagan offers a good direction for archaelogists and historians to head; more serious works would do well to take up Fagan's challenge to analyze historical weather patterns. It'll be a tough go, but well-worth the trouble. One of the book's strongest chapters is Chapter 11, showing how French colonial rule in the Sahel helped to impoverish and starve peoples living there, while increasing desertification. Here, he echoes the theme of the vastly superior _Late Victorian Holocausts: El Nino and the Making of the Third World_. This latter book, by Mike Davis, is one of the most important books of recent decades. Where Fagan fails to consider structural inequalities and human suffering as a result of El Ninos, Davis fully succeeds. The books make for some nice contrasts (I assigned both to my college students). Turn to Davis, after you've had fun with Fagan.
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