The Shock of the Anthropocene

Christophe Bonneuil is a historian at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique and edits the Anthropocène series for Editions du Seuil.

Jean-Baptiste Fressoz , formerly a lecturer at Imperial College, London, is now a historian at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique.

"This is the first book to seriously come to terms-philosophically and psychologically as well as scientifically-with the overwhelming planetary transformation implied by the word 'Anthropocene.' Bonneuil and Fressoz have done humanity a great service by thinking through the startling issues raised by the fact that our species has launched the entire ecosphere onto a new and frightening trajectory."
-Richard Heinberg, Senior Fellow, Post Carbon Institute

"This bold, brilliantly argued history of the Anthropocene epoch is a corrective to cosy thinking about humanity's grave disruptions to Earth systems ... [Bonneuil and Fressoz] call for a 'new environmental humanities,' and a shift away from market-based approaches that feed the beast."
-Barbara Kiser, Nature

"At a time when the word 'Anthropocene' is becoming so fashionable, this well-documented and well-argued book will help readers sort out the various meanings of this most unstable label ... The authors show the bewildering varieties of historical actors at work in what is called the 'environmental crisis.'"
-Bruno Latour, author of Inquiry into Modes of Existence

"A very important book. In this historically rich and meticulously detailed work, Bonneuil and Fressoz show us how to keep our head without losing our heart to technocracy."
-Timothy Morton, author of Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World

"Cleverly argued and extremely compelling, this book offers a remarkably timely analysis and critique of the very notion of the Anthropocene. It's widely held that modern industrial societies innocently and ignorantly generated the forces that have wrought such dramatic ecological effects on their world. It's also believed that only very recently, because of the heroic work of a few visionaries, has this ignorance been overcome and the truth of the Anthropocene at last revealed. Using an astonishing range of sources from climate sciences and economics, history and