Includes bibliographical references (p. [279]-292) and index.

The Time Travelers -- The Guillotine and the Bell Jar -- The Cryptic Moth -- "Endless and as Nothing" -- The World Eaters -- "Quest for the Black Diamond" -- Cleopatra's Needles -- Vulcan's Anvil -- The Phantom of the Open Hearth -- "The Dynamo and the Virgin" -- The Dwellers in the Crystal Palace -- Native Son -- "Never a Man" -- Threshold -- A Tap on the Shoulder -- Pendulum -- A Death in the Amazon -- The Climatic Flywheel -- Cassandra's Listeners -- Signs and Portents -- Scenarios -- Kyoto.

For historian Gale Christianson, the emergence of global warming is one of the most compelling stories in the history of humankind. In his brilliantly constructed book, he blends the research of a scholar with a novelist's storytelling skill, finding the clues to global warming both deep in the past and right before our eyes.

Weaving together an incredible cast of characters and events, from the demise of the Anasazi in the American Southwest to the 1997 Kyoto Conference on Climate Change, he offers a fascinating perspective on what may be the most remarkable change in nature since the retreat of the glaciers some ten thousand years ago.