The World Without Us (Paperback)

The World Without Us By Alan Weisman Cover Image
Unavailable. Orders will be auto-cancelled.
(This book cannot be returned.)

Fall '08/Winter '09 Reading Group List


“With the help of engineers, art conservators, zoologists, religious leaders, and paleontologists, Weisman looks at what would happen if humans disappeared. Let's face it, things fall apart -- but how? This thought-provoking book looks to the past and the future, and offers much to discuss and debate.”
— Barbara Theroux, Fact & Fiction, Missoula, MT

Description


Time #1 Nonfiction Book of 2007
Entertainment Weekly #1 Nonfiction Book of 2007
Finalist for the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award
Salon Book Awards 2007
Amazon Top 100 Editors' Picks of 2007 (#4)
Barnes and Noble 10 Best of 2007: Politics and Current Affairs
Kansas City Star's Top 100 Books of the Year 2007
Mother Jones' Favorite Books of 2007
South Florida Sun-Sentinel Best Books of the Year 2007
Hudson's Best Books of 2007
St. Louis Post-Dispatch Best Books of 2007
St. Paul Pioneer Press Best Books of 2007

If human beings disappeared instantaneously from the Earth, what would happen? How would the planet reclaim its surface? What creatures would emerge from the dark and swarm? How would our treasured structures--our tunnels, our bridges, our homes, our monuments--survive the unmitigated impact of a planet without our intervention? In his revelatory, bestselling account, Alan Weisman draws on every field of science to present an environmental assessment like no other, the most affecting portrait yet of humankind's place on this planet.

About the Author


Alan Weisman is the author of several books, including The World Without Us—a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist, winner of the Wenjin Book Prize of the National Library of China, and an international bestseller translated in 34 languages. An award-winning journalist, his reports have appeared in Harper's, New York Times Magazine, Atlantic Monthly, Discover, Vanity Fair, and Mother Jones. A former contributing editor to Los Angeles Times Magazine, Weisman is a senior radio producer for Homelands Productions. He lives in Massachusetts.

Praise For…


“This is one of the grandest thought experiments of our time, a tremendous feat of imaginative reporting.” —Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature and Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future

“Brilliantly creative . . . An audacious intellectual adventure . . . His thought experiment is so intellectually fascinating, so oddly playful, that it escapes categorizing and clichés. . . . It sucks us in with a vision of what is, what has been, and what is yet to come. . . . It's a trumpet call that sounds from the other end of the universe and from inside us all.” —Salon

“An astonishing mass of reportage that envisions a world suddenly bereft of humans.” —The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“A fascinating nonfiction eco-thriller . . . Weisman's gripping fantasy will make most readers hope that at least some of us can stick around long enough to see how it all turns out.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Alan Weisman has produced, if not a Bible, at least a Book of Revelation.” —Newsweek

“The book boasts an amazingly imaginative conceit that manages to tap into underlying fears and subtly inspire us to consider our interaction with the planet.” —The Washington Post

“Extraordinarily farsighted . . . Beautiful and passionate.” —The Boston Globe

“Grandly entertaining.” —Time

The World Without Us gradually reveals itself to be one of the most satisfying environmental books of recent memory, one devoid of self-righteousness, alarmism, or tiresome doomsaying.” —Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

“A refreshing, and oddly hopeful, look at the fate of the environment.” —BusinessWeek

“This book is the very DNA of hope.” —The Globe and Mail (Toronto)

“Prodigious and impressive.” —The New York Times

“I don't think I've read a better nonfiction book this year.” —Lev Grossman, Time Book Critic

“In his provocative new book, The World Without Us, Alan Weisman adds a dash of fiction to his science to address a despairing problem: the planet's health.” —U.S. News & World Report

“An exacting account of the processes by which things fall apart. The scope is breathtaking . . . the clarity and lyricism of the writing itself left me with repeated gasps of recognition about the human condition. I believe it will be a classic."



Product Details
ISBN: 9780312427900
ISBN-10: 0312427905
Publisher: Picador
Publication Date: August 5th, 2008
Pages: 432
Language: English
Series: Kushiel's Legacy