| Book Review | Environmental History, 12.1

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| Book Review | Environmental History, 12.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum: How Humans Took Control of Climate. By William F. Ruddiman. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005. xiv + 202 pp. Illustrations, tables, maps, bibliography, index. Cloth $24.95.

It is not often that historians should take note of a book on historical developments written by a scientist, but Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum is such a work. Since the boom in environmental consciousness over the past three decades, innumerable volumes have been published on the effects of industrialized human societies on the global environment. Ruddiman's simple but startling hypothesis is to challenge the assumption that prior to the industrial revolution the impact of people was limited and localized. Rather, he argues, civilizations have been altering the climate of the planet in substantial ways for the last eight thousand years through large-scale changes in vegetation as agriculture spread in Africa and Asia, and then to most of the rest of the world by two thousand years ago.

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