The Third Horseman

In May 1315, it started to rain and didn't stop in north Europe until August. After seven years, the combination of lost harvests, warfare, and pestilence would claim six million lives, one eighth of Europe's total population. The author draws on an array of disciplines, from military history to feudal law to agricultural economics and climatology, to trace the succession of traumas that caused the Great Famine. Here history's best documented episode of catastrophic climate change comes alive.