This is the revised and abridged version of the 2013 publication, which had pp xxox + 871. Enormous research efforts have gone into the writing of this book, an incisive analysis of historical and climatological events during the seventeenth century across the world. It has contemporary importance in many ways. The sweep and breadth of the work is an example of assiduous research. One of the purposes of the book seems to be to disabuse the world of reliance on models suggesting that that climate change can be predicted. Instead, we should assume that it may occur suddenly with consequences that may be devastating. The author does not want to debate whether climate change is caused by human activities or not, but wants to emphasise that irrespective of the original cause, the Little Ice Age of the seventeenth century shows that famines, floods and also sudden outbreak of plague caused untold misery and horrendous deaths. No government in power at that time could effectively mitigate the misery caused to the poor. Kings added to the mass deaths through conflicts for personal aggrandisement or to settle scores with rivals. The table at p. 25 gives a summary of the wars and the rebellions that shook the whole of Europe and the British Isles. There were similar rebellions in other parts of the world like China and India. People revolted only when pushed to the wall through uncontrollable hunger. A similar table drawn for the twentieth century may not look different.
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