Synopsis
As compelling as the best science fiction, Alan Weisman's well-researched book asks readers to imagine a planet earth divested of homo sapiens. Weisman suggests that within a relatively short time buildings would fall, streets would become waterways, infrastructures would crumble, and the food chain would undergo massive reshuffling. (Good-bye, poodles! Welcome back, Molokai Creepers!) The purpose of this gloomy visualization is to demonstrate the deeply-grooved footprint that humans have left on this planet, and to suggest which human endeavors have created the most environmental impact. It is also a touching reminder of our mortality and our relatively brief tenure in the span of time.
| Details | | Publication Date: | 2007-07-10 |
| Size | | Length: | 304 pages | | Height: | 9.5 in | | Width: | 6.8 in | | Thickness: | 1.2 in | | Weight: | 20.0 oz |
Publisher's Note
A penetrating, page-turning tour of a post-human Earth.
in the WORLD WITHOUT US, Alan Weisman offers an utterly original approach to questions of humanity's impact on the planet: he asks us to envision our Earth, without us.
In this far-reaching narrative, Weisman explains how our massive infrastructure would collapse and finally vanish without human presence; which everyday items may become immortalized as fossils; how copper pipes and wiring would be crushed into mere seams of reddish rock; why some of our earliest buildings might be the last architecture left; and how plastic, bronze sculpture, radio waves, and some man-made molecules may be our most lasting gifts to the universe.
WORLD WITHOUT US reveals how, just days after humans disappear, floods in New York's subways would start eroding the city's foundations, and how, as the world's cities crumble, asphalt jungles would give way to real ones. It describes the distinct ways that organic and chemically treated farms would revert to wild, how billions more birds would flourish, and how cockroaches in unheated cities would perish without us. Drawing on the expertise of engineers, atmospheric scientists, art conservators, zoologists, oil refiners, marine biologists, astrophysicists, religious leaders from rabbis to the Dali Lama, and paleontologists---who describe a prehuman world inhabited by megafauna like giant sloths that stood taller than mammoths---Weisman illustrates what the planet might be like today, if not for us.
From places already devoid of humans (a last fragment of primeval European forest; the Korean DMZ; Chernobyl), Weisman reveals Earth's tremendous capacity for self-healing. As he shows which human devastations are indelible, and which examples of our highest art and culture would endure longest, Weisman's narrative ultimately drives toward a radical but persuasive solution that needn't depend on our demise. It is narrative nonfiction at its finest, and in posing an irresistible concept with both gravity and a highly readable touch, it looks deeply at our effects on the planet in a way that no other book has.
Industry Reviews
"By approaching the end of humanity from this unique angle, as a given, Weisman succeeds in throwing the spotlight on the earth itself--and invests us in her fate. His thought experiment is so intellectually fascinating, so oddly playful, that it escapes categorizing and cliché--in particular that earnest moralizing that can make environmental screeds so predictable. Written as if by a compassionate and curious observer on another planet, his book restores a sense of wonder not just to one little piece of the cosmos, but to the human race whose amazing deeds have transformed it, and whose equally monumental folly now threatens it."
(07/23/2007)
"...Weissman has written a sort of pop science ghost story, in which the whole earth is a haunted house."
(08/13/2007)
"In his morbidly fascinating nonfiction eco-thriller....With...a devilish sense of entertainment values, Weisman turns the destruction of our civilization and the subsequent rewilding of the planet into a Hollywood-worthy, slow-motion disaster spectacular and feel-good movie rolled into one."
(09/02/2007)
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