The Frigid Golden Age: Climate Change, the Little Ice Age, and the Dutch Republic, 1560–1720.
One of the ten best history books of 2018, according to the Financial Times.
Winner of the 2018 Atmospheric Science Librarians International (ASLI) Choice award for best history book related to atmospheric science.
Recipient of a featured review in The American Historical Review, and an H-Environment Roundtable Review.
Winner of the 2018 Atmospheric Science Librarians International (ASLI) Choice award for best history book related to atmospheric science.
Recipient of a featured review in The American Historical Review, and an H-Environment Roundtable Review.

Beginning in the thirteenth century, natural forces started cooling the climate of the Northern Hemisphere. The “Little Ice Age” that followed would reach its chilliest point in the seventeenth century, when, according to many scholars, it destabilized societies around the world by ruining harvests and contributing to outbreaks of epidemic disease. The Frigid Golden Age is the first book devoted to explaining how a society thrived in the Little Ice Age. It argues that the precocious economy, unusual environment, and dynamic intellectual culture of the Dutch Republic in its seventeenth-century Golden Age helped it prosper as other societies unraveled in the face of extremes in temperature and precipitation.
The book pioneers a step-by-step method for connecting climate change to human history. First, it links gradual, global trends in temperature and circulation to changes in the frequency, variability, and intensity of weather in specific regions, such as the North Sea or the Svalbard archipelago. Second, it connects these regional weather events to specific human activities, from a naval battle to the creation of a new painting. Finally, third, it uses many of these local connections to trace broader relationships between climatic and human trends on the biggest scales in time and space. Unlike most other environmental histories of the Little Ice Age, it isolates the influence of climate change on human history by following all of these relationships not only in periods of acute climatic cooling, but also in the warmer decades that separated them.
The Frigid Golden Age reveals that regional climate changes provoked local or regional weather that shortened but occasionally imperiled Dutch journeys to Asia; set the stage for the growth of lucrative industries in the Arctic; enriched merchants stockpiling grain; and encouraged innovations in domestic travel. Frigid winters permitted invasions of the Republic across frozen rivers but also weakened armies besieging Dutch cities, while new patterns of atmospheric circulation gave crucial advantages to Dutch fleets fighting English and French rivals at sea. Dutch artists depicted Little Ice Age weather and wrestled with its consequences, while entrepreneurs and inventors introduced technologies that mitigated or exploited its impacts on local environments.
These histories reveal, above all, that early modern farmers, soldiers, merchants, artists, and politicians often responded constructively, creatively, and even proactively to climate change. They were not the hapless victims that climate historians have often portrayed them to be. Their triumphs and failures have much to tell us today, as we struggle to adapt to a warming world.
For reviews, interviews, related articles, and purchasing information, visit the book's website.
The book pioneers a step-by-step method for connecting climate change to human history. First, it links gradual, global trends in temperature and circulation to changes in the frequency, variability, and intensity of weather in specific regions, such as the North Sea or the Svalbard archipelago. Second, it connects these regional weather events to specific human activities, from a naval battle to the creation of a new painting. Finally, third, it uses many of these local connections to trace broader relationships between climatic and human trends on the biggest scales in time and space. Unlike most other environmental histories of the Little Ice Age, it isolates the influence of climate change on human history by following all of these relationships not only in periods of acute climatic cooling, but also in the warmer decades that separated them.
The Frigid Golden Age reveals that regional climate changes provoked local or regional weather that shortened but occasionally imperiled Dutch journeys to Asia; set the stage for the growth of lucrative industries in the Arctic; enriched merchants stockpiling grain; and encouraged innovations in domestic travel. Frigid winters permitted invasions of the Republic across frozen rivers but also weakened armies besieging Dutch cities, while new patterns of atmospheric circulation gave crucial advantages to Dutch fleets fighting English and French rivals at sea. Dutch artists depicted Little Ice Age weather and wrestled with its consequences, while entrepreneurs and inventors introduced technologies that mitigated or exploited its impacts on local environments.
These histories reveal, above all, that early modern farmers, soldiers, merchants, artists, and politicians often responded constructively, creatively, and even proactively to climate change. They were not the hapless victims that climate historians have often portrayed them to be. Their triumphs and failures have much to tell us today, as we struggle to adapt to a warming world.
For reviews, interviews, related articles, and purchasing information, visit the book's website.
Ripples on the Cosmic Ocean: A History of People and Environments in the Changing Solar System
Forthcoming in 2025, Harvard University Press / Viking / Donga M&B
Ripples on the Cosmic Ocean reimagines the solar system as a mosaic of environments organized and entangled by the forces of electromagnetism and gravity. It argues that real and perceived changes in these environments shaped human history in previously untold ways.
The book shows that cosmic environmental changes sparked new conversations about the emergence, significance, and ultimate fate of life. Beginning in the seventeenth century, scholars interpreted changes in the color, brightness, and even the shape of other worlds as evidence for clouds, water, vegetation, and even alien civilizations. In response, diverse intellectuals created the principles and technologies for communicating between planets. They designed novel machines and practices for observing the heavens; developed innovative literary genres; invented and reinvented mass media; and even proposed the basic ideas underpinning what we now call the Anthropocene.
By the nineteenth century, changes in environments beyond Earth began to hint at new, “existential” risks to humanity. Solar variability; asteroid and comet impacts; shifts in atmospheric chemistry; and even the invasion of sapient or microbial aliens all seemed to imperil our species. When the maturing union of science with government and industry in the twentieth century allowed states to imitate the effect of these destructive forces on Earth, the study of cosmic changes helped reveal precisely how dangerous that could be.
Yet changes in cosmic environments also encouraged unprecedented attempts to mitigate existential risks. Twentieth century efforts to identify and minimize threats caused by deadly microorganisms, deteriorating atmospheric ozone, runaway climate change, solar storms, and asteroid or comet impacts created a new era in which powerful governments and large corporations monitored, and to some degree controlled, the relationship between the stage of Earth and the arena of the solar system. This new era involved more than simply negotiating the risks posed by natural changes to cosmic environments. It also involved altering those environments artificially – by importing terrestrial microorganisms to other worlds, for example, or creating swarms of radioactive particles in the space around Earth. Today, environmental changes across the solar system not only influence human actions; they are increasingly caused by them.
The book shows that cosmic environmental changes sparked new conversations about the emergence, significance, and ultimate fate of life. Beginning in the seventeenth century, scholars interpreted changes in the color, brightness, and even the shape of other worlds as evidence for clouds, water, vegetation, and even alien civilizations. In response, diverse intellectuals created the principles and technologies for communicating between planets. They designed novel machines and practices for observing the heavens; developed innovative literary genres; invented and reinvented mass media; and even proposed the basic ideas underpinning what we now call the Anthropocene.
By the nineteenth century, changes in environments beyond Earth began to hint at new, “existential” risks to humanity. Solar variability; asteroid and comet impacts; shifts in atmospheric chemistry; and even the invasion of sapient or microbial aliens all seemed to imperil our species. When the maturing union of science with government and industry in the twentieth century allowed states to imitate the effect of these destructive forces on Earth, the study of cosmic changes helped reveal precisely how dangerous that could be.
Yet changes in cosmic environments also encouraged unprecedented attempts to mitigate existential risks. Twentieth century efforts to identify and minimize threats caused by deadly microorganisms, deteriorating atmospheric ozone, runaway climate change, solar storms, and asteroid or comet impacts created a new era in which powerful governments and large corporations monitored, and to some degree controlled, the relationship between the stage of Earth and the arena of the solar system. This new era involved more than simply negotiating the risks posed by natural changes to cosmic environments. It also involved altering those environments artificially – by importing terrestrial microorganisms to other worlds, for example, or creating swarms of radioactive particles in the space around Earth. Today, environmental changes across the solar system not only influence human actions; they are increasingly caused by them.
The Oxford Handbook of Resilience in Climate History
Lead editor, with J. R. McNeill and Amy Hessl. Under Contract with Oxford University Press
Earth has warmed by over one degree Celsius since the pre-industrial period, and model simulations suggest that, under present emissions trends, it will warm by perhaps three degrees Celsius by the end of the twenty-first century. The combination of the speed, eventual magnitude, and human origin of present-day warming has no parallel in Earth’s history. Yet in the 300,000-year history of humanity, natural causes or “forcings” – including slight changes in Earth’s orbit, modest fluctuations in solar output, and volcanic eruptions – have abruptly and profoundly changed both global and regional climates.
For over a century, scholars have argued that these natural climate changes shortened or interrupted growing seasons and thereby caused or intensified harvest failures in many societies. The "History of Climate and Society" (HCS) - the interdisciplinary field that identifies human responses to past climate change - has been dominated by studies that use statistical or qualitative methods to link these harvest failures to food shortages, famines, outbreaks of epidemic disease, and conflict within or between societies. Many of the most influential HCS publications conclude that severe or sustained periods of cooling and drought caused some of history’s best-known civilizations to “collapse” – to rapidly lose political organization, socioeconomic complexity, and ultimately population.
Climate histories now inform many dire predictions for humanity’s future, including the common assumption that present-day civilizations would disintegrate if global heating exceeds dangerous thresholds. Yet in recent decades, HCS scholars have increasingly explored the resilience of past communities and societies to climate changes and anomalies. In over 30 chapters, written by authors in many disciplines and in six continents, this handbook will reveal how populations have been resilient in the face of climate changes from the Last Glacial Maximum (the last "ice age," in popular parlance) to the present period of extreme warming. Its aim is not only to revise how scholars understand the past, but also to discern common pathways by which populations endured climate change: pathways that may inform present-day policymaking and activism.
For over a century, scholars have argued that these natural climate changes shortened or interrupted growing seasons and thereby caused or intensified harvest failures in many societies. The "History of Climate and Society" (HCS) - the interdisciplinary field that identifies human responses to past climate change - has been dominated by studies that use statistical or qualitative methods to link these harvest failures to food shortages, famines, outbreaks of epidemic disease, and conflict within or between societies. Many of the most influential HCS publications conclude that severe or sustained periods of cooling and drought caused some of history’s best-known civilizations to “collapse” – to rapidly lose political organization, socioeconomic complexity, and ultimately population.
Climate histories now inform many dire predictions for humanity’s future, including the common assumption that present-day civilizations would disintegrate if global heating exceeds dangerous thresholds. Yet in recent decades, HCS scholars have increasingly explored the resilience of past communities and societies to climate changes and anomalies. In over 30 chapters, written by authors in many disciplines and in six continents, this handbook will reveal how populations have been resilient in the face of climate changes from the Last Glacial Maximum (the last "ice age," in popular parlance) to the present period of extreme warming. Its aim is not only to revise how scholars understand the past, but also to discern common pathways by which populations endured climate change: pathways that may inform present-day policymaking and activism.