Sam White is assistant professor of environmental history at the Ohio State University and author of The Climate of Rebellion in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire (Cambridge University Press, 2011), which explores the far-reaching effects of severe cold and drought in the Middle East during the Little Ice Age of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. His publications have appeared in various books and journals, including Environmental History, The International Journal of Middle East Studies, Interdisciplinary History, The William and Mary Quarterly, and Isis (forthcoming), and they have received several book and article prizes. His current book manuscript (in contract with Harvard University Press) explores the challenges presented by the unfamiliar and often extreme climate faced by the first European explorers and colonists in North America during the 1500s and early 1600s. Prof. White is also the co-founder and website administrator of climatehistorynetwork.com.