Clive Ponting was until recently Reader in Politics and International Relations at the University of Wales, Swansea. Available in Pimlico are his most recent books: Gunpowder: From the Alchemists of China to the Battlefields of Europe; The Pimlico History of the Twentieth Century; World History: A New Perspective; Thirteen Days: The Road to the First World War; and The Crimean War. He recently took early retirement and now lives on a small Greek island where he is creating a Mediterranean garden and cultivating olives.
If there is a single book on the subject to engage the enthusiast, silence the cynic and enlighten the ignoramus, this is it Observer Ponting's re-evaluation of history is an important antidote to mental troglodytism. It also makes a welcome change from the scatter-gun apocalypse-mongering which has become standard fare in green literature. With luck and foresight, and more books like this, we may yet learn our lesson Independent on Sunday Pioneering...a book good enough to rival the best American products in the field... Clive Ponting has embraced a daunting task with commendable success Times Literary Supplement An ambitious and thought-provoking attempt to rewrite history from an ecological standpoint Independent Large, ambitious and often enthralling, it is a successful attempt to look at the unfolding of world history from an entirely new perspective Literary Review