Media: BOOK - paperback, 182 pages
Author: W. Shepheard
Year: 2018
ISBN: 9781925781465
Other: maps, tables, index
Publisher: Unlock the Past

'Surviving Mother Nature’s Tests' directly relates many of the situations observed in nature to the lives of families who experienced or endured them, primarily over the past several centuries. Family historians will appreciate that natural events had wide-ranging effects on generations of people – especially in consideration of how they sought to obtain the basic necessities of food, shelter and employment – as well as influencing changes to political, economic and societal situations.

Information presented here will also be of interest to those who want an introduction to the causes and effects of climate change and its impact on the environment and human habitats of the past.

The book summarises different natural phenomena, the time periods in which they occurred and explanations of how people survived the particular tests imposed on them by Mother Nature. Among these are:

• Climate Change – what controls global changes
• Epochal Changes – how gradual altering of physical environments and human habitats occurring over generations affected living conditions and societal history
• The Holocene Eepoch – brief summaries of human and natural history of the last 10,000 years illustrating the frequency of alternating warm and cold periods and the commonality of the effects on societies
• The Last Millennium – natural conditions during the last 1,000 years with an emphasis on the effects on people, communities and social systems
• Slow-Developing Events – how such events as drought and famine, erosion of coastal margins, infilling of estuaries, shifts in river courses and volcanic activity affected living conditions and economies
• Rapidly-Materialising Incidents – impacts on people and communities from disease, earthquakes, floods and storms

Contents:
Illustrations

Introduction

The Parameters of Climate Change
 - Determining Whether Climate has Changed
 - Controls on Climate
 - Pre-Holocene Warm and Cold Periods

Epochal Changes: The Holocene
 - Warm and Cold Periods of the Holocene
 - The Rise and Fall of Civilizations
 - Summary

The Last Millennium
 - Medieval Warm Period
 - Little Ice Age
 - Changed Farming Methods
 - Enclosure
 - Land Abandonment
 - The Age of Enlightenment
 - The Industrial Revolution
 - Modern Warm Period
 - Summary

Slow-Developing Events
Rivers and Estuaries
 - River Bolin, Cheshire
 - River Trent, Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire, Yorkshire
 - Humber Estuary, Lincolnshire, Yorkshire
Shoreline Processes
 - Culbin Foreland and Findhorn Estuary, Morayshire, Nairnshire
 - Firvie, Aberdeenshire
 - Holderness, East Yorkshire
 - The Broads, Norfolk, Suffolk
 - Dunwich, Suffolk
 - Romney Marsh, Dungeness Foreland, Kent, Sussex
 - Hallsands, Devon
 - Kenfig, Bridgend
 - Morfa Harlech, Gwynedd
Drought
 - 1540 Drought in Europe
 - 1887-1910 The Long Drought
Famine
 - 1315-1317 Great Famine
 - 1623 Uplands Famine
 - 1740-1741 Irish Famine 'Year of the Slaughter'
 - 1845-1852 Irish Potato Famine 
Volcanic Eruptions
 - 1258 Indonesia
 - 1783 Laki
 - 1815 Tambora
 - 1883 Krakatau
Summary

Rapidly-Developing Events
Major Storms
 - 1287 South England Storms: Kent, Norfolk and Sussex
 - 1638 Lightning Strike: Widecombe, Devon
 - 1694 Culbin Sands Disaster: Morayshire and Nairnshire
 - 1703 The Great Storm: Southern England
 - 1824 The Great Gale: Cornwall to Sussex
 - 1839 Night of the Big Wind
 - 1848 Moray Firth
 - 1881 Eyemouth Disaster
Floods
 - 1607 Bristol, Channel Flood
 - 1771 Tyne, Tees, Wear and Eden Rivers Flood
 - 1852 Oxford (Duke of Wellington) Flood
 - 1866 Pennine Flood
 - 1920 Louth Flood
 - 1953 North Sea Flood
Earthquakes and Landslides
 - 1771 Solway Moss Irruption
 - 1839 Bindon, Dorset
 - 1884 Colchester Earthquake
Diseases and Epidemics
 - 1347-1351 Black Death
 - 1665-1666 Great Plague
 - 1831-1866 Cholera Epidemics
 - 1918 Influenza Pandemic
Fire
Summary

Genealogical Information
 - Information from Parish Registers
 - Other Information Available in Historical Records
 - Summary

Summary and Conclusions
References
Index

ALL CLIMATE BOOKS FROM WAYNE SHEPHEARD

Surviving Mother Nature’s Tests: The Effects Climate Change and Other Natural Phenomena have had on the Lives of our Ancestors - book  |  ebook

Genealogy and the Little Ice Age - book  |  ebook

2-BOOK BUNDLE - SAVE 22% - Surviving Mother Nature’s Tests and Genealogy and the Little Ice Age - book  |  ebook

REVIEW:

'We are all products of the challenges successfully faced by our ancestors. Whether they were natural, the topic of this book, man-made like war and willful neglect, or often a combination, we only exist because of the web of thousands upon thousands of forebears making up our family tree who came through the adversities they faced. The heart of the book is two major chapters delving into specific examples of how climate and other natural phenomena have impacted society which comprise more than half of Surviving Mother Nature's Tests text.' - John Reid, Anglo-Celtic Connections blog (please note is above is only a portion of the review, you can read his full review here).