Why read The King's Harvest?

Book cover of The King's Harvest

Book description

A multidisciplinary environmental history of early China's political systems, featuring newly available Chinese archaeological data

"Over four thousand years of unsustainable growth, Chinese states replaced a diverse ecosystem with a monocropping grain state. All states destroy environments, but only the state can save us. So ancient China's spectres still haunt…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The King's Harvest as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Olivia Milburn

Author

As climate catastrophes happen around the globe, this is a fantastic account of the early history of environmental degradation across the north China plain from the first humans down to the unification of China in 221 BCE. This book connects social and political developments to the increasing and unsustainable exploitation of the environment in just this one corner of the world, but it's an important corner, because the north China plain is where a succession of major Chinese states had their capital cities. This is a depressing read, but also an acknowledgement of just how significant the impact of changes…

From Olivia's 3 favorite reads in 2024.