The Burning Earth

'Sunil Amrith has given us the most readable global environmental history yet... a towering achievement and a joy to read' - J. R. McNeill

'The Burning Earth is as beautiful as it is indispensable, as breathtaking as it is devastating. It answers questions most of us have been too daft even to ask. It will set you on fire' - Jill Lepore, author of These Truths: A History of the United States

'A devastating panorama of human folly, a poetic meditation on how the search for freedom from nature undermined the very conditions for life on earth. Beautifully written, Sunil Amrith’s global and long-term view is crucial to understanding the environmental predicaments we are in, and, perhaps, to restore a distraught world. A must read for anyone concerned with the state of the planet' - Sven Beckert, author of Empire of Cotton

'Memorable and mesmerizing. Sunil Amrith has gifted us a page-turner of a book, written with passionate lucidity' - Rob Nixon, author of Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor


A brilliant, paradigm-shifting global history of how humanity has reshaped the planet, and the planet has shaped human history, over the last 500 years.

Ever since innovations in agriculture vastly expanded production of the staples of food energy, our remarkable achievements in reshaping nature have brought about an overwhelming expansion in the life chances of billions of people. Yet every technological innovation has also empowered humans to exploit each other and the planet with devastating brutality, twinning the stories of environment and of Empire, genocide and eco-cide, as with Spanish silver mining in Peru and British gold mining in South Africa.

After the age of empire, new nations raced to make up lost ground, expanding human freedom at devastating ecological cost. Amrith’s environmental lens provides an essential new way of understanding war: as a massive reshaping of the earth through the global mobilization of natural resources, those resources including humans themselves. He also makes clear that migration is often a consequence of environmental harm.

Reinterpreting a history previously seen from a Euro-and-anthropocentric viewpoint, Amrith relates in brilliant prose, and on the largest canvas, a magisterial, mind-altering epic - vibrant with stories, characters, vivid images and rich archival resources.