Nature’s Mutiny: How the Little Ice Age of the Long Seventeenth Century Transformed the West and Shaped the Present

An epic bout of global cooling sparked the rise of capitalism and rationality, according to this weakly argued environmental history. Journalist Blom (Fracture) probes Europe’s response to a prolonged cooling period from 1570 to 1690, an era of harsh winters and chilly, damp summers that saw frequent crop failures, famines, and witch burnings as authorities sought supernatural scapegoats for bad harvests. (On the plus side, London held Frost Fairs on the frozen-over Thames, with ox roasts and bawdy entertainments.) The deep freeze prompted a new genre of winter landscape painting and Shakespeare’s line “the winter of our discontent,” Blom contends, along with profound economic changes: agricultural innovations; systems of market-oriented land management that raised farm productivity but dispossessed peasants; and a new international grain trade centered in Amsterdam, which became the open-minded, capitalistic nursery of the Enlightenment. He devotes much space to colorful profiles of free-thinking philosophers and scientists, from Giordano Bruno to Baruch Spinoza, who were ostracized, exiled, or executed for questioning religious dogma. Blom’s arguments are intriguing but often tenuous, especially when he asserts a causative connection between the weather and particular ideas. While the arguments may not be airtight, this wide-ranging and affectionate portrait of 17th-century Europe has a poetic appeal. Photos. (Feb.)