The World Without Us
by Alan Weisman
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Book Summary Information
Author: Alan WeismanEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2008-08-05
ISBN: 0312427905
Number of pages: 432
Publisher: Picador
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780312427900
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Book Reviews of The World Without Us
Book Review: Thought-provoking facts, but taken with a grain of salt
Summary: 3 Stars
One thing that surprises me about this book is some of the comments from other reviewers printed on the back: "This book is the very DNA of hope"--The Globe and Mail or "Extraordinarily foresighted ... beautiful and passionate." While I agree with the foresighted comment (it's a book whose very premise is about the future without us, so if it wasn't foresighted, I don't know what it would be) the others I find strange in their overwhelming sentiment that this book left them with a positive feeling.
I'm not going to say this book depressed me but...well, it's a bit depressing. Basically between the plastics, the radioactive metals and the CFCs, we seem pretty doomed if all the facts in this book are correct. I mean, I suppose we are doomed anyway since our sun will eventually expand and consume the planet, but our meddling seems to be shortening our lifespan as a species significantly. And even if that isn't taken into consideration, the multitude of ways we've permanently altered the landscape, through extinction and mining and carbon consumption and chemistry and genetic alterations is pretty harrowing when read all in one little tome, as this book presents it. And Weisman is willing to go back tens of thousands of years, to show how early man, through "controlled" burning and sophisticated hunting, has been shaping the land for millennia. I now realize that the "untouched" woods I hike through with my dogs are all "second-growth" forests--the new generation after the first one was, at some point, razed by humans for farming. Because pretty much every stitch of the earth has been razed at some point, if this book is correct.
However, I'm not always sure that everything Weisman presents is as horrible as it seems. The plastics and the radioactive fallout and the destruction of the ozone layer are pretty inarguable bad and scary--though even he admits that nature will likely one day evolve to thrive off of those pollutants. Birds and other animals, in fact, seem to exist around Chernobyl and thrive, despite the fact that the area is still considered inhabitable. But sometimes I felt like his description of humans altering the landscape (like through the controlled burns, hunting, agriculture, etc. ) took things a little too far. Mass extinction of many species in one area in a short time would be bad, but is there not an element of Darwinism to the creatures who have evolved to live in the world we changed? Are there not species that have a symbiotic relationship with us? Are we all really as bad as all that? Are we, too, not of this earth?
I think Weisman's ending sentiment is an important one, though it's difficult for me to imagine it ever having an impact until it's too late. Basically, our species has become so adept at surviving, that we are outliving our resources. However, unlike other animals that have done this in the past, only to be culled by horrible methods (starvation due to lack of resources, pandemics due to overcrowding, etc.), we have an advantage--we know that we're doing it and we have the ability to stop it ourselves very easily. Stop having so many children. Basically, Weisman's reported theory is that if all female humans on earth be restricted to one child, our population would go down to 19th century numbers within a century. It seems so incredibly extreme when said that way, but the improvements it would have on our lives would be incredible. We would still have all the advantages of modern life, only with far greater resources to support it. The problem, of course, is that we're still too obstinate in our instinct to procreate. People would never agree to self-limit their families, they have to basically be forced, and that presents a scary sci-fi dystopian future kind of vibe.
I say, read this book for the amazing facts and ideas presented. It will change the way you view everything--and I mean everything. From the hill on the horizon to the birds perching on your rooftop to the plastic water bottle you bring to the gym. But take it with a small grain of salt. It is doubtful that all is as bad as Weisman sometimes presents it, and statistics range so wildly in some of his reports that the two figures almost prompt different conclusions (like, for instance, the 4,000 to 100,000 human deaths resulting from Chernobyl--that's a bit of a difference!). Or his numbers concerning the fatalities of birds in North America every year. He claims we have 20 billion birds in North America, and yet when you add up the numbers he claims are killed by power lines, cars, house cats and windows every year, you realize something simply must be wrong, because otherwise we're killing off far more birds than could possibly reproduce to sustain that number. The fact is, there's no way one man got all these thousands of facts and figures exactly right, since not even the scientists studying the different subjects their entire lives necessarily have the facts right. And there is one small paradox that he failed to touch upon, which I find strange. The thing is, in a world without us, who will be there to appreciate all the beautiful things that flourish in our absence?
Summary of The World Without Us
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.
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