Annette Kehnel, The Green Ages: Medieval Innovations in Sustainability . Trans. from the German by Gesche Ipsen. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2024, 342 pp., 45 b/w ill.

While I am writing this review, Annette Kehnel is about to publish a new book (Sept. 2024, Die sieben Todsünden: Menschheitswissen für das Zeitalter der Krise ) in which she appears to pick up the notion of the Seven Deadly Sins as a fundamental teaching for humankind today facing a global crisis. Those seven vices are, indeed, universal shortcomings in human life, and Kehnel suggests, as I have already done in the past ( Wisdom from the European Middle Ages , 2022; or see my blog, “Seven Deadly Sins in Politics, no less and no more,” Elephant Journal , online at: https://www.elephantjournal.com/2023/05/seven-deadly-sins-in-politics-no-less-and-no-more/, May 2023), that by paying attention to medieval experiences we might gain a well-established set of tools to cope with the critical conditions today brought about by human (in)actions, i.e., shortcomings and vices, such as greed, sloth, lust, wrath, and pride.