3 thinkers, books, and ideas connected to this field.
Geoffrey Parker's 2013 monumental study of the global crisis of the 17th century — arguing that climate change (the Little Ice Age), state failure, and warfare combined to produce unprecedented death tolls across Eurasia in the mid-17th century.
Volume VIII of Will and Ariel Durant's The Story of Civilization — covering Europe from 1648 to 1715, the age of absolute monarchy, the wars of Louis XIV, and the intellectual revolution of Locke, Newton, and Leibniz.
Bernard Bailyn's 2012 account of the brutal first decades of English settlement in North America — depicting the violence, starvation, disease, and mutual brutality of the 17th century encounter between English settlers and Native Americans.