The Burning Earth

The Burning Earth by Sunil Amrith is a brilliant, paradigm-shifting global survey of how human history has reshaped the planet, and vice versa over the last 500 years.

In this paradigm-shifting global history, Amrith twins the stories of environment and Empire, of genocide and eco-cide, and of the expansion of human freedom and its costs. Drawing on an extraordinarily rich diversity of primary sources, he examines the ruins of Portuguese silver mining in Peru, British gold mining in South Africa, and oil extraction in Central Asia.

Amrith explores the railways and highways that brought humans to new terrains of battle against each other and against nature. His account of the ways the First and Second World Wars involved the massive mobilization not only of men, but of other natural resources from around the globe, provides an essential new way of understanding war as an irreversible reshaping of the planet. He also reveals migration as a consequence of environmental harm.

The imperial, globe-spanning pursuit of profit, combined with new forms of energy and the possibilities of freedom from hunger and discomfort, freedom to move and explore, has brought change to every inch of the Earth. On the largest canvas, Amrith relates a mind-altering epic—vibrant with stories, characters, and vivid images—in which humanity might find the collective wisdom to save itself.