The Burning Earth
A History
In this magisterial book, historian Sunil Amrith twins the stories of environment and Empire, of genocide and eco-cide, of an extraordinary expansion of human freedom and its planetary costs. Drawing on an extraordinarily rich diversity of primary sources, he reckons with the ruins of Portuguese silver mining in Peru, British gold mining in South Africa, and oil extraction in Central Asia. He explores the railroads and highways that brought humans to new terrains of battle against each other and against stubborn nature. Amrith’s account of the ways in which the First and Second World Wars involved the massive mobilization not only of men, but of other natural resources from around the globe, provides an essential new way of understanding war…
$47.00
September 24, 2024Sunil Amrith is the Renu and Anand Dhawan Professor of History at Yale University and professor at the Yale School of the Environment. He is the author of five books, most recently The Burning Earth, and recipient of multiple awards, including a MacArthur "genius" fellowship, a fellowship at the British Academy, and the 2024 Fukuoka Prize. He grew up in Singapore and lives in Connecticut.
