The burning earth : an environmental history of the last 500 years / Sunil Amrith.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 355-394) and index.

Prologue: dreams of escape -- Introduction: nature and freedom -- Part I. Seeds of change (1200-1800) -- Horizons of desire -- Winds of death -- Land and freedom -- Suburbs of hell -- Part II. Breaking the chains (1800-1945) -- Revolutions in life and death -- Impossible cities -- Nitrogen nightmares -- War on earth -- Part III. The human exception (1945-2025) -- Freedom's promise -- The human condition -- Burning forests -- Tipping points -- Four hundred parts per million... -- Epilogue: roads to repair.

"In this magisterial book, historian Sunil Amrith twins the stories of environment and Empire, of genocide and eco-cide, of an extraordinary expansion of human freedom and its planetary costs. Drawing on an extraordinarily rich diversity of primary sources, he reckons with the ruins of Portuguese silver mining in Peru, British gold mining in South Africa, and oil extraction in Central Asia. He explores the railroads and highways that brought humans to new terrains of battle against each other and against stubborn nature. Amrith's account of the ways in which 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. So too does this book reveal the reality of migration as consequence of environmental harm.The imperial, globe-spanning pursuit of profit, joined with new forms of energy and new possibilities of freedom from hunger and discomfort, freedom to move and explore, has brought change to every inch of the Earth. Amrith relates in gorgeous prose, and on the largest canvas, a mind-altering epic--vibrant with stories, characters, and vivid images--in which humanity might find the collective wisdom to save itself"--Publisher's description.