Originating in the Middle East sometime around 10,000 BCE, the Agricultural Revolution was the period when humans began farming. Humans transitioned from organizing themselves in hunter-gatherer societies to establishing settled agricultural communities. Marks describes this transition as central to human history.

This term was recently invented by anthropologists to describe the current geological era, in which humanity is having unprecedented impacts on the natural world, causing climate change, mass extinctions, and other drastic changes in the world’s environments. The text examines how these problems stem from industrialized agriculture and the resulting human population growth in the Anthropocene era.

Named for Christopher Columbus, the first European sailor to reach the Americas, the Columbian Exchange refers to both the intentional and accidental movement of people, commodities, food, plants, animals, and even diseases between the Americas, Africa, and Eurasia. Marks notes the immense and often devastating effects of the Columbian Exchange.