Heat, a History

"This elegant and witty book brings the galactic scale of ‘warming‘ down to the intimate level of heat, sweat, and bodies, thus inviting the reader to ask why we tend to prefer abstractions to embodied experiences, even for such a vital matter as the temperature of our world."—Arjun Appadurai, author of The Future as Cultural Fact “The juggernaut of climate change stalks our planet, but heat is intimate and local. On Barak’s brilliant analysis of the tension between this global abstraction and human experience points to a more compassionate politics. He turns the history of the Middle East’s complex relationship to temperature into a guide for the future.”—Julia Adeney Thomas, editor of Altered Earth: Getting the Anthropocene Right and coauthor of The Anthropocene: A Multidisciplinary Approach. "Everyone talks about heat these days, but what does it actually feel like? What does it mean in the lives of people? Choosing the hottest part of the world for Heat, a History, On Barak investigates how heat and fossil fuels have impacted each other in the Middle East, revealing new configurations of power—in Palestine, over women, from the US and the Gulf—in the process. Relentlessly fascinating in the way only the best environmental history can be, Heat is packed with surprising and illuminating details. It is the most original history of both the Middle East and the climate crisis written to date."—Andreas Malm, author of How to Blow Up a Pipeline "‘Heat’ is a notion with many different meanings. Focusing on the Middle East, Barak brilliantly explores some of these meanings by revealing how they interconnect and generate vicious cycles that make social change and ecological progress increasingly difficult. Heat, a History is a pathbreaking work that will have a significant impact on historical and social-scientific debates."—Marcel van der Linden, International Institute of Social History