SOROITY APPARELSORORITY ACCESSORIESGREEK BOOKSCOOL CLIPSBACK TO GE
Outdoors & Nature
Home

Books

Outdoors & Nature

The World Without Us

 
 
The World Without Us
View larger imageEmail a friend

 
 
 
 
 

The World Without Us

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.
The 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.
Alan Weisman teaches international journalism at the University of Arizona. He is also an award-winning journalist whose reports have appeared in Harper’s, The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, Discover, and on NPR, among others. Formerly a contributing editor to the Los Angeles Times Magazine, he is now a senior radio producer for Homelands Productions.
National Book Critics Circle Award Nominee
A Time Magazine Best Book of the Year
An Orion Book Award Finalist
 
In The World Without Us, Alan Weisman offers an original approach to questions of humanity’s impact on the planet: he asks us to envision our Earth, without us.
 
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.
 
The 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. In posing a provocative concept with gravity in a highly readable presentation, it looks deeply at our effects on the planet in a way that no other book has.
 
Also available on CD as an unabridged audiobook.  Please email academic@macmillan.com for more information.

"Weisman imagines what would happen if the earth’s most invasive species—ourselves—were suddenly and completely wiped out . . . Weisman knows from the work of environmental historians that humans have been shaping the natural world since long before the industrial age. His inner Deep Ecologist may dream of Earth saying good riddance to us, but he finds some causes for hope . . . it’s the cold facts and cooler heads that drive Weisman's cautionary message powerfully home. When it comes to mass extinctions, one expert tells him, 'the only real prediction you can make is that life will go on. And that it will be interesting.'"—Jennifer Schuessler, The New York Times Book Review

"In his morbidly fascinating nonfiction eco-thriller, The World Without Us, Weisman imagines what would happen if the earth’s most invasive species—ourselves—were suddenly and completely wiped out . . . Weisman turns the destruction of our civilization and the subsequent rewilding of the planet into a . . .  slow-motion disaster spectacular and feel-good movie rolled into one . . . Weisman travels from Europe's last remnant of primeval forest to the horse latitudes of the Pacific, interviewing everyone from evolutionary biologists and materials scientists to archaeologists and art conservators in his effort to sketch out the planet's post-human future . . . Weisman knows from the work of environmental historians that humans have been shaping the natural world since long before the industrial age. His inner Deep Ecologist may dream of Earth saying good riddance to us, but he finds some causes for hope amid the general run of man-bites-planet bad news . . . In the end, it's the cold facts and cooler heads that drive Weisman's cautionary message powerfully home. When it comes to mass extinctions, one expert tells him, 'the only real prediction you can make is that life will go on. And that it will be interesting.'"—Jennifer Schuessler, The New York Times Book Review
 
"Teasing out the consequences of a simple thought experiment—what would happen if the human species were suddenly extinguished—Weisman has written a sort of pop-science ghost story, in which the whole earth is the haunted house. Among the highlights: with pumps not working, the New York City subways would fill with water within days, while weeds and then trees would retake the buckled streets and wild predators would ravage the domesticated dogs. Texas's unattended petrochemical complexes might ignite, scattering hydrogen cyanide to the winds—a 'mini chemical nuclear winter.' After thousands of years, the Chunnel, rubber tires, and more than a billion tons of plastic might remain, but eventually a polymer-eating microbe could evolve, and, with the spectacular return of fish and bird populations, the earth might revert to Eden."—The New Yorker
 
"Traveling down many different avenues of scientific research, Alan Weisman postulates the complete disappearance of mankind from planet Earth . . . By his estimate most of our leavings would rot and crumble; much of our damage would take eons to undo . . . Very early in the book Mr. Weisman makes his argument personal by describing how a house would fall apart . . . As with many of the book's other conclusions, this one is accompanied by a hint of unseemly glee. The more elaborately Mr. Weisman paints a worst possible outcome, the better he has made his case. And the more triumphant he sounds . . . It is one thing to imagine one house with a leaking roof, burgeoning mold, rusting nails, broken windows and small animals gnawing on the drywall. But this book hypothesizes more avidly about decay on a grander scale . . . This book's global-scale dismay about humanity's environmental impact is its most important theme. But it's Mr. Weisman’s more marginal facts that give The World Without Us so much curiosity value . . . Mr. Weisman covers a huge amount of terrain. His research is prodigious and impressive. So is his persistence . . . The World Without Us has an arid, plain, what-if style and an air of relentless foreboding."—Janet Maslin, The New York Times
 
"In The World Without Us, this pleasantly morbid parlor game becomes a grandly entertaining (and refreshingly unscreechy) study of the ways we meddling humans have perturbed our planet and of how blithely the earth would shrug off our departure."—Time
 
"Weisman's engrossing depiction of what would ha...

  • ISBN13: 9780312347291

  • Condition: New

  • Notes: BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed

In Stock
Availability: Usually ships in 1 business days
List Price: $24.95
Our Price: $16.47 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25.
You Save: $8.48 (34%)

Note: Item may be sold and shipped by another company. Learn more.
Product Details:
Author: Alan Weisman
Hardcover: 336 pages
Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books
Publication Date: July 10, 2007
Language: English
ISBN: 0312347294
Package Length: 9.3 inches
Package Width: 6.5 inches
Package Height: 1.3 inches
Package Weight: 1.3 pounds
Average Customer Rating: based on 308 reviews
 
 

Customer Reviews:
Average Customer Review:4.0
Write an online review and share your thoughts with other customers.

2Over-hyped  Jul 22, 2010
I bought this book after hearing interviews with the author on several talk radio programs. When I read it I felt like it had been over-hyped. All of the most interesting parts of the book had been covered in the interviews and in the end it was more like a morality tale.

On the bright side, I did stop using exfoliating cleansers that contain little plastic beads as the exfoliating agent. I find that the crushed walnut shells found in other products or salt scrubs work just as well if not better.

0 of 1 found the following review helpful:

3Disappointed  Jun 24, 2010
The book was relatively cheap. Based on the description I anticipated a paperback book in relatively good condition. Instead I received a hardcover book without a jacket. Generally this would actually be a pleasant surprise, except the back cover was covered in three layers of large white stickers which I soon realized had been applied to cover a large torn area.

5The World Without Us  Jun 22, 2010

In the end, nature triumphs. This book explores what would occur if we humans were, alone of all life, to disappear in an instant, and all else left unimpeded to proceed upon its course. Nature would not return to its pre-human condition, because we have eliminated species and transplanted fauna. Nature, were we to leave it, would transform into something it wasn't before us; but nature, without us, would thrive, and in time, it would obscure nearly all trace of our having been here.

The title is slightly misleading, because this isn't a book only about the way nature would overtake cities with greenery, water, and wild animals, and how it would wear down metals and plastics till they lose all artificial form. The author alternates in his discussion between how we have changed and held back nature to how nature would change and readjust if we were suddenly gone. For example, some species would not survive without us, or not survive quite as well, and some would survive far better.

Machinery, no longer maintained, would stop, and safeguards would fail. Poisons would be released. Species would die, migrate, or adapt. Damns would strain, then burst. Nature would reclaim and readjust. In time our significant part in the changes of nature would diminish, and the system of nature would proceed unimpeded by our ghostly influence. But it may be that nature will never "detoxify" itself fully of human effects.

Although detoxification is not a metaphor explicitly used in the book, it seems apt, when looking at some of the effects we have on the biology of nature. Plastics, manufactured polymers in existence for little more than half a century, would endure in substance for unknown centuries beyond us, regardless of their decomposition of form. The post-human presence of plastics is a long-term change we have made in the environment of nature. Centuries after we are gone, this presence of plastics in nature will continue to effect and change nature through its effect on non-human life.

Plastics are just one far-reaching toxic consequence of our having been here. Radioactive waste will last even longer. Not only the waste we bury and store and hide away now, but the post-human waste that is exposed and accrues from the collapse and decay of nuclear processing plants and the breakdown of metals that sheathe thermonuclear warheads.

Nature is not a static system. Before we were here, there was change in nature. Being here, we have wrought change; and after we are gone, change will persist. Nature does not need us. We need it.


1 of 1 found the following review helpful:

5very interesting  May 06, 2010
I first saw this author on The Daily Show and had my wife get a copy for me. I thought it was well-written and I really enjoyed it. Hard to know how it was researched but it held my interest and I really enjoyed reading it. I hope we can save the earth so that it never has to go on without us. The first chapter, especially was terrific.

5The World Without Us  Mar 31, 2010
This book was recommended to me by a friend. I probably would not have chosen it for myself but I am finding it a fascinating read and very informative. It brings to light things about the world and it's inhabitants that every person should be aware of and try to make their own small contribution to bettering what we can....

 
 
You may also like ...
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Book 7)
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Book 7)
List Price: $34.99
Our Price: $23.09
You Save: $11.90 (34%)
Add to Cart
The Dangerous Book for Boys
The Dangerous Book for Boys
List Price: $26.95
Our Price: $17.79
You Save: $9.16 (34%)
Add to Cart
Planet Earth: The Complete BBC Series
Planet Earth: The Complete BBC Series
List Price: $79.98
Our Price: $39.99
You Save: $39.99 (50%)
Add to Cart
 
 
 
 
 
 
Web business powered by Amazon WebStore