Profit

Long before markets took the shape we know, people discovered that a modest input could yield far more output. Our species has always been skilled at drawing more from fuel, soil and living systems than it put in, whether by burning timber, working the land or reshaping entire ecosystems. Historian Mark Stoll follows this drive as it grew into capitalism, and he tracks the environmental costs that accumulated along the way.

From the start, the pressure on the earth went hand in hand with coercion, as societies found harsh ways to make people perform the labor they needed. Stoll shows how the financial inventions of medieval Italy built trade networks that, after Europeans reached the Americas, generated enormous wealth and transformed cultures. Those gains came at the expense of millions of enslaved people and Indigenous Americans.

The industrial age bound the world together through commerce and set off an energy revolution that changed daily life everywhere. Once production grew so efficient that societies had more goods than they could use, a different kind of capitalism emerged, one that relied on individuals consuming without limit.

The book's scope runs from the Doge's palace in medieval Venice to Jeff Bezos aboard a spacecraft of his own. Stoll places the environment at the center of capitalism's development and examines the lasting damage its consequences have left behind.