Thin Ice: History, Climate Change and the Fate of Human Societies

Joseph Manning grew up in Western Springs, IL and received his MA and PhD from the University of Chicago. Most of his early work was within a framework he terms Analytical humanities - establishing an historical framework for Greco-Roman period Egypt in which documentary papyri (pa-pi-re) written in Greek and in Egyptian can be interpreted. With that as a technical base, his earlier work has been done in Hellenistic Mediterranean economic history with a focus on Ptolemaic (tal-may-ick) Egypt. He is now working within an even broader historical scope examining climatic change at various scales, and global societal "responses" on both micro and macro scales. His goal is to understand complexity, rather than to simplify. He outlines this philosophy, including the necessity of working in teams, in the first chapter of his latest book, The Open Sea, Princeton University Press, 2018. He is currently working on a book dealing with human history and climate change over the last 10,000 years. This is expected to hit shelves in 2023.