Floods, Famines, and Emperors

The definitive account of how the world’s best-known climate event has made an indelible impact on history. 

“Fagan makes high drama out of…the cracking of El Nino’s riddle.”—Washington Post

In the last three decades, El Niño has brought extreme drought, floods, and heat waves to every continent in recent years. Such effects are not new: climatologists know the El Niño and other climate anomalies have been disrupting weather patterns throughout history. But archaeologist Brian Fagan was among the first to ask how they have put stress on cultures and forced them to adapt. What determines whether they adapt successfully? How do these climate stresses affect people’s faith in the foundations of their society and the legitimacy of their rulers? How vulnerable is our own society to climate change? 

In this dazzlingly original book, Fagan shows that short-term climate shifts have been a major—and hitherto under-recognized—force in history. El Niño -driven droughts have brought on the collapse of dynasties in Egypt; El Niño monsoon failures have caused historic famines in India; and El Niño floods have destroyed whole civilizations in Peru. Other short-term climate changes may have caused the mysterious abandonment of the Anasazi dwellings in the American Southwest and the collapse of the ancient Maya empire, as well as changed the course of European history.  

This beautifully written, groundbreaking book is the definitive account of how the world’s most pivotal climate event has shaped human history. 

• “Fagan makes high drama out of…the cracking of El Nino’s riddle.”
  Washington Post
• “The aberrant and often devastating weather patterns brought on by El Nino are by now familiar. According to Fagan, they have had a less recognized effect. Could severe climatic change topple a modern civilization?”
  Scientific American
• “Fagan… draws on his archaeology background to intriguingly explore the correlation between unusual climatic shifts and unusual historical events.”
  Kirkus
• “Brian Fagan's engaging new book is a masterful synthesis of ocean, atmosphere and human dynamics. It chronicles the commanding interplay of climatic change and the creation and collapse of great civilizations. This is compelling reading for the global audience of a warming world.” 
  Michael E. Moseley, author of The Incas and Their Ancestors
• “Clear, precise and thoroughly engaging...Drawing on an encyclopedic range of sources—archaeology, geology, history and ethnography—Fagan immerses the reader in a lively anecdotal portrait of the relationship between major climatic events and major historical events in both ancient and modern times. This is a must-read for laypersons, serious scholars and students alike.”
  Thomas D. Dillehay, University of Kentucky
• “Every so often, advances in scientific understanding require reconsideration of the historic record. Brian Fagan brings recent climatology to bear on history with admirable and entirely convincing skill. A landmark book.”
  William H. McNeill, author of Plagues and Peoples