A history of the twentieth century told through what it did to the planet.

McNeill tracks the acceleration of human impact—industrialisation, war, population growth, fossil fuels—and shows how these forces reshaped air, water, soil, and climate at a scale without precedent. 

McNeill positions environmental damage as the primary victim of progress, and makes it central to the century’s story. Economic expansion, technological innovation, and political power are shown to depend on ecological transformation, often in ways that only become visible decades later. The narrative builds a cumulative picture: not a single catastrophe, but a sustained reconfiguration of the Earth’s systems.

Clear and unsentimental, it reads as both historical account and baseline. There is no excuse, this maps the current environmental conditions with no moral shorthand.

Penguin paperback (2001). Light shelf wear to covers with minor edge rubbing; faint creasing to spine. Binding solid. Internally clean with no inscriptions or markings. Very good condition.