A Cold Welcome: The Little Ice Age and Europes Encounter with North America
English
By (author): Sam White
Cundill History Prize Finalist
LongmanHistory Today Prize Finalist
Winner of the Roland H. Bainton Book Prize
Meticulous environmental-historical detective work.
Times Literary Supplement
When Europeans first arrived in North America, they faced a cold new world. The average global temperature had dropped to lows unseen in millennia. The effects of this climactic upheaval were stark and unpredictable: blizzards and deep freezes, droughts and famines, winters in which everything froze, even the Rio Grande. A Cold Welcome tells the story of this crucial period, taking us from Europes earliest expeditions in unfamiliar landscapes to the perilous first winters in Quebec and Jamestown. As we confront our own uncertain future, it offers a powerful reminder of the unexpected risks of an unpredictable climate.
A remarkable journey through the complex impacts of the Little Ice Age on Colonial North AmericaThis beautifully written, important book leaves us in no doubt that we ignore the chronicle of past climate change at our peril. I found it hard to put down.
Brian Fagan, author of The Little Ice Age
Deeply researched and excitingHis fresh account of the climatic forces shaping the colonization of North America differs significantly from long-standing interpretations of those early calamities.
New York Review of Books