He ends The Third Horseman with a stark observation: in some ways, global ecology is more precarious nowadays than it was in the 1300s.”

“William Rosen is a good enough writer to hold interest and maintain the fraught relations between nature and politics as a running theme. This book will appeal foremost to history lovers, but it should also interest anyone who enjoys a well-documented story.” The interactions Rosen describes have been studied but are seldom incorporated into popular history, and the author never overreaches in his conclusions, providing a well-grounded chronicle. The depredations committed in battle by Englishmen and Scots were augmented by years of bad weather: the result was that people died in droves.

“Rosen ( The Most Powerful Idea in the World) argues persuasively that natural disasters are most catastrophic when humankind’s actions give them a push. A work that glows from the author’s relish for his subject.” delights in the minutiae of history, down to the most fascinating footnotes. Rosen deftly delineates the backstory and the perfect storm of heavy rains, hard winters, livestock epidemics, and war leading to the catastrophe.” “A kink in Europe’s climate during the fourteenth century indirectly triggered a seven-year cataclysm that left six million dead, William Rosen reveals in this rich interweaving of agronomy, meteorology, economics and history.

The Third Horseman by William Rosen