The Vortex: An Environmental History of the Modern World (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780822947561)

Environmental challenges are defining the twenty-first century. To fully understand ongoing debates about our current crises--climate change, loss of biological diversity, pollution, extinction, resource woes--means revisiting their origins, in all their complexity. With this ambitious, highly original contribution to the environmental history of global modernity, Frank Uekter considers the many ways humans have had an impact on their physical environment throughout history. Ours is not a one-way trajectory to sudden collapse, he argues, but rather death by a thousand cuts. The many paths we've forged to arrive in our current predicament, from agriculture to industry to infrastructure, must be considered collectively if we are to stay afloat in what Uekter describes as a vortex: a powerful metaphor for the flow of history, capturing the momentum and the many crosscurrents that swept people and environments along. His book invites us to look at environmental challenges from multiple perspectives, including all the twists and turns that have helped to create the mess we find ourselves in. Uekter has written a world history for an age where things are falling apart: where we know what lies ahead and are equipped with the right tools--technological and otherwise--and plenty of experience to deal with environmental challenges, but somehow fail to get our affairs in order.

Author: Frank Uekotter
ISBN-10: 0822947560
ISBN-13: 9780822947561
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
Language: English
Published: 04/18/2023
Pages: 848
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 2.70lbs
Size: 9.37h x 6.46w x 2.28d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 01/01/2024