“We are facing a watershed moment,” writes the German historian Annette Kehnel at the start of this engaging book. The world is faced with increasingly limited resources, growing injustice and proliferating horrors at a time when “we find ourselves gradually running out of ideas”. The best thing to do, says Kehnel, is to think about how to find a “new vision for the future”. And, she writes, the best way to do that is to look to the past.
The Green Ages was originally published in Germany in 2021 with the title Wie konnten auch anders – ‘How can it be otherwise’. Although the book sounds, and often reads, like a manifesto for the world of today, it is in fact a more interesting exploration of how societies in the past…
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Bbc History (Digital) - 1 Issue, October 2024