The World Without Us | 
 enlarge | Author: Alan Weisman
Publisher: Picador
Category: Book
List Price: $15.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  233 reviews
Sales Rank: 403
Media: Paperback
Edition: Reprint
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 432
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.1 x 5.5 x 0.8
ISBN: 0312427905
Dewey Decimal Number: 304.2
EAN: 9780312427900
ASIN: 0312427905
Publication Date: August 5, 2008
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Product 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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 228 more reviews...
 Breath-taking in scope, meticulous in research September 6, 2008
One of the most fascinating non-fiction titles that I have ever read in my entire life and, believe me, I have read some very good ones.
Written by Alan Weisman, an award-winning journalist, who imagines what the world would be like if all of a sudden humans vanished from the face of the earth .... but not without a trace. He uses this hypothetical scenario to talk about the changes man has brought about to earth and how long would the human creations last without us (yes, the 'trace' I was talking about).
He takes this wonderful premise as a vehicle to discuss such diverse topics as human and animal evolution, air and water pollution, animal and plant extinction, natural disasters, Mayan history, NASA's Voyager and Pioneer spacecrafts, the fascinating history of Cyprus, the fate of 441 active nuclear reactors of the world, the history of the Panama Canal, the ecology of the uninhabited demilitarized zone between North and South Korea, the ramifications of the Chernobyl disaster, the future of human art, among other things.
The book discusses too many disciplines of science to name here.
Breathtaking in its scope and meticulous in research, this book is definitely a great intellectually stimulating read.
It's a hugely informative, highly readable, immensely entertaining read which is breath-taking in its concept and has been called 'one of the grandest thought experiments of our time.'
 Important starting place for understanding the world without us... August 18, 2008
There have been many reviews of this book, and I agree with most of the complimentary comments. Instead of rehashing these comments, I'll focus on two shortcomings. One, like similar books covering this subject, the author focuses too intently on one major urban center: New York City. And while this provides a microcosm for other cities around the world, I feel that the book would have benefited greatly from focusing on vignettes from cities around the world, rather than devoting so much time to New York. Certainly, the author discusses other locations, but NYC dominates. Second, and perhaps less important, is the author's overuse of lists. Especially annoying in the audiobook version, the frequent lists in the book are an unwelcome and tedious distraction from the flow of the writing. Lists of animal species, tree types, etc., are unnecessary and disruptive. I found that these often took me out of the feeling of the work and caused me to skip ahead or simply to put the book down. This is not to knock the entire work as being unreadable, simply that this particular neance I found very annoying.
The World Without Us August 3, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Excellent book. Full of information on what we are doing to our environment and food for thought as to possible solutions. Definitely not a scare tactic treatise like many environmentalist-type books tend to be, but a honest look at where we've come from, and where we're going. Things look OK and manageable. The things we've made will take a long time to disappear. The things that we've thrown into the oceans will take a millennium to degraded. They eventually will, but how will the environment deal with them? Unlike many articles on the environment, this book doesn't preach about stopping development right away for the sake of the Earth. The term "sustained development" comes to mind. We need to keep going, but at a conscious pace. I remember a phrase from the movie "Jurassic Park" where Dr. Malcolm (the chaotician) tells the group around the lunch table that we are so consumed with the excitement of what we "can" do but we never stop to think if we "should." We need to keep building. We need to keep advancing. How we do it seems to be the problem. The book does conclude nicely though. There's a sense that all is not lost and that there is a consciousness among the offenders that things just cannot continue this way. There are many programs in the developed world to recycle waste and not treat the Earth as a dumping ground. An excellent read indeed.
Give me a moment of pause August 2, 2008
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
The book is exceptionally well written. The subject content is extemely important and broken up into easily readable but stunning segments.
Interesting but difficult to read July 29, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
When I say difficult to read, I don't mean that "The World Without Us" is unusually dense or technical. Weisman's various explorations of how the world would be if the problem of humans was removed are fascinating, informative, accessible, and at times downright alarming and scary (the section about plastics blew my mind - I had never thought about seemingly harmless plastics in such a way before). However, his vignettes are sometimes unrelated or irrelevant to one another and there is no overreaching logic or organization in the book other than the question, "What if humans disappeared today?" There are also many frustrating digressions that interrupt or distract during the vignettes. However, I still recommend it for its thought-provoking value for those who are willing to transcend its organizational chaos.
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