The World Without Us

From Barnes & Noble

Starting with the chilling premise of our sudden extinction, Alan Weisman combines science with speculation to take us on an audacious tour of what the planet might be like without us. Drawing upon the expertise of engineers, naturalists, scientists, zoologists, oil refiners, biologists, religious leaders, and others, Weisman weaves an evocative narrative that's like a chilling walk through a haunted house -- we witness the disintegration of homes and cities, watch as species wax and wane. But what a walk it is. Weisman has given us a colorful and endlessly fascinating fantasy that's also a shocking environmental wake-up call.

From the Publisher

"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."--Dennis Covington, author of National Book Award finalist Salvation on Sand Mountain

"One of the most ambitious 'thought experiments' ever."--The Cincinnati Enquirer

"Alan Weisman offers us a sketch of where we stand as a species that is both illuminating and terrifying. His tone is conversational and his affection for both Earth and humanity transparent."--Barry Lopez, author of Arctic Dreams

"Fascinating, mordant, deeply intelligent, and beautifully written, The World Without Us depicts the spectacle of humanity's impact on the planet Earth in tragically poignant terms that go far beyond the dry dictates of science. This is a very important book for a species playing games with its own destiny."--James Howard Kunstler, author of The Long Emergency

"Weisman's enthralling tour of the world of tomorrow explores what little will remain of ancient times while anticipating, often poetically, what a planet without us would be like."--Publishers Weekly (starred)

"The imaginative power of The World Without Us is compulsive and nearly hypnotic--make sure you have time to be kidnapped into Alan Weisman's alternative world before you sit down with the book, because you won't soon return. This is a text that has a chance to change people, and so make a real difference for the planet."--Charles Wohlforth, author of Los Angeles Times Book Prize–winning The Whale and the Supercomputer

"Weisman is a thoroughly engaging and clarion writer fueled by curiosity and determined to cast light rather than spread despair. His superbly well-researched and skillfully crafted stop-you-in-your-tracks report stresses the underappreciated fact that humankind's actions create a ripple effect across the web of life."--Booklist (starred)

Jennifer Schuessler

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. Writers from Carson to Al Gore have invoked the threat of environmental collapse in an effort to persuade us to change our careless ways. With similar intentions but a more 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…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." 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

Janet Maslin

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…From the gyre that is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch to the flower-growers of Kenya to the Rothamsted Research Archive in Britain, a repository for more than 300,000 soil samples, Mr. Weisman covers a huge amount of terrain. His research is prodigious and impressive.
—The New York Times

Publishers Weekly

Because of the scientific terminology and the interlinked data amassed bit by bit, this is not an easy read for narrator or lay listener. But it's a fascinating book, and Grupper handles it well. Grupper's careful narration brings to life Weisman's judicious organization, unambiguous grammatical structure and vivid descriptions of what would become of land, sea, fish, flora and fauna should humans disappear from the face of the earth. Weisman explains the earth's capacity for self-healing. Unchecked by human intervention, a city like New York would flood within days, its buildings and infrastructure would collapse, and soon the city would revert to its original ecosystem. But the message of the book is our legacy to the universe: "Every bit of plastic manufactured over the last 80 years or so still remains somewhere in the environment." Weisman and Grupper convert abstract environmental concepts into concrete ideas. Broadly and meticulously researched, finely interwoven journalism and imaginative projection, the book is an utterly convincing call to action. Simultaneous release with the St. Martin's/Dunne hardcover (Reviews, May 14). (July)

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Kirkus Reviews

Nicely textured account of what the Earth would look like if humans disappeared. Disaster movies have depicted the State of Liberty poking out from the ground and empty cities overgrown with trees and vines, but what would really happen if, for one reason or another, every single one of us vanished from the planet? Building on a Discover magazine article, Weisman (Journalism/Univ. of Arizona; An Echo in My Blood, 1999, etc.) addresses the question. There are no shocks here-nature goes on. But it is unsettling to observe the processes. Drawing on interviews with architects, biologists, engineers, physicists, wildlife managers, archaeologists, extinction experts and many others willing to conjecture, Weisman shows how underground water would destroy city streets, lightning would set fires, moisture and animals would turn temperate-zone suburbs into forests in 500 years and 441 nuclear plants would overheat and burn or melt. "Watch, and maybe learn," writes the author. Many of his lessons come from past developments, such as the sudden disappearance of the Maya 1,600 years ago and the evolution of animals and humans in Africa. Bridges will fall, subways near fault lines in New York and San Francisco will cave in, glaciers will wipe away much of the built world and scavengers will clean our human bones within a few months. Yet some things will persist after we're gone: bronze sculptures, Mount Rushmore (about 7.2 millions years, given granite's erosion rate of one inch every 10,000 years), particles of everything made of plastic, manmade underground malls in Montreal and Moscow. In Hawaii, lacking predators, cows and pigs will rule. Weisman quietly unfolds his sobering cautionary tale,allowing us to conclude what we may about the balancing act that nature and humans need to maintain to survive. First printing of 100,000. Agent: Nicholas Ellison/Sanford J. Greenburger Associates