The Burning Earth

A History

By: Sunil Amrith

Narrated by: Esh Alladi

One of Literary Hub's Most Anticipated Books of 2024

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 as an irreversible reshaping of the planet. So too does this book reveal the reality of migration as consequence of environmental harm.

The imperial, globe-spanning pursuit of profit, joined with new forms of energy and new possibilities of freedom from hunger and discomfort, freedom to move and explore, has brought change to every inch of the Earth. Amrith relates in gorgeous prose, and on the largest canvas, a mind-altering epic in which humanity might find the collective wisdom to save itself.

©2024 Sunil Amrith (P)2024 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

Environmental grieving

From a compilation of many books about the environmental history of humans, this author did his best work with trying to explain how the colonialists mindset of conquer land and people is not going to work for the world and our ability to live in it. A must read if you want to know about a 6 year old in England who has air pollution listed on her death certificate. This is imperative to bring humans poor regulation of the environment to the courts and how we might understand how we lead to the destruction of our neighbors out of greed.
And Colombia is not that bad of a place - they have the largest transportation bus system in the world that costs a fracture of what other cities have done.

first third was so slow and dry. after that it's 4 stars

first third was so slow and dry. after that it's 4 stars. I guess it was worth persisting