Fossil capital: the rise of steam power and the roots of global warming, by Andreas Malm, London and New York, Verso, 2016, 488 pp., £19.99 (paperback), ISBN 13: 978-1-78478-129-3

According to J. Donald Hughes, “the task of environmental history is the study of human relationships through time with the natural communities of which they are a part, in order to explain the processes of change that affect that relationship.” Easier said than done, perhaps, but environmental history— quite likely better than any other subdiscipline or approach to history—is more perceptive of human interconnections in the world community, or of the interdependence of humans and other living beings on the planet; indeed, environmental history typically supplements and complicates traditional economic, social, and political forms of historical analysis.!