In the 17th century, global cooling, which for many years was called "the Little Ice Age," affected everyone from herring fishermen to Rembrandt and Johannes Vermeer. Over about 150 years, cooling transformed Europe. As temperatures fell, canals froze over, grain prices increased, fortunes were made and lost, nations rose and declined. Indirectly, the same process even stimulated the beaver trade in New France, establishing the economy of Canada before it became Canada. Timothy Brook, a professor of Chinese history at both the University of British Columbia and Oxford, best known for his work on the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), wants to...