The Little Ice Age was not a good time to be alive, because human economies are tuned up to be optimal in the current climate, whatever it happens to be, and when things change suddenly it takes a generation or two for people to adjust, and since food and other resources are in short supply the natural "solution" the problem is to take up arms and kill people and destroy things, because there is really no better way to ensure a return to surplus conditions than by obliterating the means of production.
There were fairly widespread reports of cannibalism, and although some--like this one--may have been baseless (because it is based on nothing but a gut feeling, and the epistemic utility of our organs of digestion is limited at best) it's pretty clear that it did happen on multiple occasions in both China and Europe.
Non-Fiction:
Global Crisis (http://www.amazon.com/Global-Crisis-Climate-Catastrophe-Seve...) Excellent history of the climate disaster known as "the Little Ice", and the social, political and economic disruptions it produced. Due to where the records are best, lots of stuff from China, some from Japan, and various parts of Europe (particularly England) but it takes a genuinely global perspective on a decades-long event that may have reduced the human population of Earth by as much as 1/3. Data rich and extremely well-written, it gives some insight into how humans are apt to respond and adapt in the face of climate change (the first generation or two is not pretty, but new institutions, attitudes and adaptations do come along.)
Loneliness (http://www.amazon.com/Loneliness-Human-Nature-Social-Connect...) Recent science on the effects of social connection and the lack thereof, by one of the premier researchers in the field. Highly recommended for people who are feeling out of the loop (I work at home and recently changed cities, and recognized I was lacking a bit in human contact even for someone who is very comfortable on their own.)
The Civilization of the Middle Ages, Norman Cantor: a somewhat dated by still useful account of medieval civilization, from it's Roman roots to the early Renaissance.
Other recommendation: http://www.amazon.com/Darwins-Theorem-TJ-Radcliffe/dp/099375... Speculative fiction with big ideas (the nature of god, the role of science, the universality of evolution) and character-driven action (I am the author, so take the recommendation for what you will.)
http://www.amazon.com/Global-Crisis-Climate-Catastrophe-Seve...
Concepts--all concepts--are made things, and the edges we draw around them are the edges of our attention. People draw those edges in different places, or not at all, depending on their priors. As such, a certain type of person will argue that there wasn't "really" a "general criss" in the 17th century because the panoply of events aren't enough to trigger their edge-detectors, and they feel that their edge-detectors are arbiters of reality. Arguments of this nature are rarely productive. The events happened regardless of what you call them.
That the global climate underwent a statistically significant excursion in the 17th century is hard to argue against. That that excursion was also economically significant is likewise difficult to argue against. Unprecedented multi-year runs of poor harvests aren't really something that can be wished away with ideology. Finally, that the economic excursion helped drive political decision making should be relatively uncontroversial, unless one were to argue that politics happens in an economic vacuum.
Parker does a good job of emphasizing the contingency of outcomes. People made decisions for reasons that seemed good to them--often of the form "God loves my country, so if I do X, Y will necessarily and certainly happen!"--and results followed for unrelated reasons (often of the form, "Luck.")
He also argues that something like 1/3 of the human species died in the crisis, which is fairly astonishing, but given the death tolls for the places where we have data, not entirely unsupportable.