Reader recommendation: Global Crisis

Monitor readers share their favorite book picks.

I am starting to read Geoffrey Parker's massive volume, Global Crisis: War, Climate Change & Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century.  In this book, Parker explores the connections between the Little Ice Age and the wave of famines, epidemics, rebellions, and civil wars that swept the globe between 1620 and 1680. Parker finds that contemporary estimates that approximately a third of the human population died out are likely to be accurate. This is both fascinating history and a useful object lesson for today. It is our response to climate changes, whether human-induced or naturally occurring, that determines if they are catastrophes or transformative opportunities.