"With passion, erudition and insight, Philipp Blom has written a devastating history of the human illusion that we are, as Descartes said, the lords and masters of nature. Blom helps us to understand the climate crisis as the nemesis of this illusion, and he also guides us towards a new understanding of ourselves as creatures of the natural world, vitally dependent on our understanding and respect for nature. A moving and important work." Michael Ignatieff, author of On Consolation: Finding Solace in Dark Times "In this rich, illuminating and thoroughly readable book, Philipp Blom, the German historian, reveals why Western Christian culture, in contrast to most other cultures, became obsessed about controlling nature and the environment. In just 500 years of human history, the West has wrought changes on the world which are unprecedented in their speed and extent. With an impressive range of Western and non-Western sources, Blom takes us on a dizzying journey of progress and destruction, blending philosophy with the history of science in a fast-paced narrative that brings us to the present day - an era that promises great prosperity and great destruction. A tour de force." Misha Glenny, author of McMafia "Without sacrificing any sense of the contingencies that have shaped human history over centuries, this brilliant book tracks how the desire to dominate the Earth came to be an integral part of what European intellectuals later defined as modernity.

Blom's lucid and superb skills of exposition will speak powerfully to thinkers in and of the West. They will, additionally, hold up a mirror to the modernizing elites elsewhere who, for generations, have made this desire their own, a desire whose global career has now arguably created an existential crisis for humans. A book of global relevance." Dipesh Chakrabarty, author of The Climate of History in a Planetary Age.