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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.

 

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. A National Book Critics Circle Award FinalistA Time Magazine Best Book of the YearAn Orion Book Award FinalistEntertainment Weekly #1 Nonfiction Book of 2007 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.  The World Without Us is also available on CD as an unabridged audiobook.  Please email academic@macmillan.com for more information.

“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 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.”—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 b

About the Author

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Alan Weisman is 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. A former contributing editor to the Los Angeles Times Magazine, he is a senior radio producer for Homelands Productions and teaches international journalism at the University of Arizona. His essay "Earth Without People" (Discover magazine, February 2005), on which The World Without Us expands, was selected for Best American Science Writing 2006.

Praise for The World Without Us…

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"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)