A new perspective on familiar events in history describes how a 500-year change in climate that lasted from A.D. 1300 until 1850 shaped modern European history.

Warmth and its aftermath. The medieval warm period ; The great famine -- Cooling begins. The climatic seesaw ; Storms, cod and doggers ; A vast peasantry -- The end of the "full world". The specter of hunger ; The war against the glaciers ; "More like winter than summer" ; Dearth and revolution ; The year without a summer ; An Ghorta Mór -- The modern warm period. A warmer greenhouse.