Profit
An Environmental History
-
- $27.99
-
- $27.99
Publisher Description
Profit — getting more out of something than you put into it — is the original genius of homo sapiens, who learned how to unleash the energy stored in wood, exploit the land, and refashion ecosystems. As civilization developed, we found more and more ways of extracting surplus value from the earth, often deploying brutally effective methods to discipline people to do the work needed.
Historian Mark Stoll explains how capitalism supercharged this process and traces its many environmental consequences. The financial innovations of medieval Italy created trade networks that, with the European discovery of the Americas, made possible vast profits and sweeping cultural changes, to the detriment of millions of slaves and indigenous Americans; the industrial age united the world in trade and led to an energy revolution that changed lives everywhere. But when efficient production left society awash in goods, a new sort of capitalism, predicated on endless individual consumption, took its place.
This story of incredible ingenuity and villainy begins in the Doge’s palace in medieval Venice and ends with Jeff Bezos aboard his own spacecraft. Mark Stoll’s revolutionary account places environmental factors at the heart of capitalism’s progress and reveals the long shadow of its terrible consequences.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"Capitalism's story is tightly woven together with the natural world," according to this eye-opening survey from environmental historian Stoll (Inherit the Holy Mountain). Exploring how human development has reconfigured the natural environment for more than a million years, Stoll spotlights such innovations as the generation of fire, the mining of minerals, and the translocation of plants and animals. Discussions of the Agricultural Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, and the post-WWII Great Acceleration feature profiles of individuals who helped launch new stages of capitalism (Christopher Columbus, Andrew Carnegie) or raised awareness about the destructive impact of human progress (George Perkins Marsh, Rachel Carson). Stoll is particularly enlightening on the ways in which early capitalist practices, including the extraction of gold and silver to make coinage, resulted in air and water pollution, species extinction, soil erosion, drought, and even climate change. Throughout, he offers poignant reminders that even a system as ubiquitous and seemingly unassailable as capitalism has the potential to be disrupted by plague, natural disasters, and other forces beyond human control. Sweeping in scope yet grounded in intriguing particulars, this offers fresh perspective on an economic system "we cannot live with... and cannot live without."
