The World Without Us | 
 enlarge | Author: Alan Weisman
Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
Buy Used: $3.70
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Avg. Customer Rating:  246 reviews
Sales Rank: 5077
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 336
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.2
ISBN: 0312347294
Dewey Decimal Number: 304.2
EAN: 9780312347291
ASIN: 0312347294
Publication Date: July 10, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 241 more reviews...
 Interesting "What If?" Look at the World November 23, 2008
A very well written and captivating look at Mother Earth's response to the disappearance of humans. I felt the author did a fantastic job at educating the reader on the devastating impact of important human discoveries that we take for granted today. It really will make you think twice about bringing home a plastic bag from the grocery store.
I also enjoyed the limitation of religious theories and beliefs as this book is dedicated to physical science.
life will find a way - but we should too November 20, 2008
It's an easy speculation to say that without humans, the earth will restore, recleanse, rectify itself. Indeed, in his book The World Without Us, Alan Weisman repeatedly hints to the reader that the world doesn't need us as much as we need it. But Weisman goes beyond the obvious implication and details just how incredibly short-sighted we humans have been in just a brief time on this planet.
Weisman thoroughly stresses home the point that despite our tendencies toward toxicity, life will indeed find a way, whether it be millennia or billennia. There are a whole lot of ideas to take away from this thought experiment, for example the futility of our marvelous infrastructure once we are no longer around to monitor it; what will happen when wonders like the Chunnel, the Panama Canal, our volatile oil refineries and nuclear reactors/repositories as well as our subways have no one to flip the off switch or close the valve? How will the unmeasurable amount of polymers (plastic) dumped in our oceans annually begin to degrade, and what are the hopes of a hungry microbe that evolves the ability to feed on them?
Of the many thought provoking speculations and projections Weisman so meticulously researches and thoughtfully relates, he proposes the irony that the realization of our collective death may just perhaps contribute to the saving of ourselves. Interviewing the organizer of the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, and yes it it's a real organization, he postulates that if humans were really serious about curbing overpopulation, thereby eliminating juvenile delinquency among other issues, we might just have an epiphany:
" ...spiritual awakening would replace panic, because a dawning realization that as human life drew to a close, it was improving. There would be more than enough to eat, and resources would again be plentiful, including water. The seas would replenish. Because new housing wouldn't be necessary, so would forests and wetlands.
...Like retired business executives who suddenly find serenity by tending a garden, Knight envisions us spending our remaining time helping rid an increasingly natural world of unsightly and now useless clutter, in pursuit of which we'd once swapped something alive and lovely." (p.243)
As improbable it may be that people would go to such extremes or even somehow suddenly become extinct, Weisman's book is an ambitious and enlightening experiment that brings us closer to acknowledging our impact upon and responsibility to the world, while we're still with it.
I agree with the other reviews November 17, 2008
Very well written. Not as much detail in some places, but given the scope of the topic, that's forgiveable. It's interesting to note how little we do that will be permanent. Especially modern housing. Great reading!
A fascinating intellectual exercise November 15, 2008
The World Without Us concerns an interesting hypothetical scenario. What happens to the earth if humanity disappears? The cause of humanity's departure is irrelevant. Instead, what becomes of our cities? What happens to the massive human-created infrastructure that litters the planet? What are the long term effects of the environmental damage humanity has caused? What happens to animals and plants that we have directly affected over the centuries? Alan Weisman explores the answers to these fascinating, if somewhat morbid questions. Some people have criticized this book as a purely intellectual exercise with no real use or merit. My rejoinder is simple. We as humans cannot begin understand our impact on out planet without investigating our planet's reactions to us. This book does an excellent job of explaining the impact of the human footprint. Plus, I am admittedly a sucker for hypothetical scenarios such as this. What if? That has always been something that has interested me, and Alan Weisman looks into a very interesting and important What If? scenario.
 Wiesman preaches the tenants of animism October 30, 2008
0 out of 7 found this review helpful
Weisman refers to many less-complex life-forms as our ancestors.
Weisman prays to "Mother Earth" at the very end of the book.
These are tenants of Animism or worshiping animals because they are your ancestors.
Weisman proposes that watching animals and plants is more enjoyable than having raising children.
Weisman anthromorphsizes evolution giving it or animals the power to design their genetic mutations.
I won't even go into the way he practically deifies "Natural Selection" as if it actually could create new genetic information.
The two interesting things I took from it were that "science" doesn't know how the oil deposits formed under the ocean and that "science" claims there are actual tree parts multiple millions of years old that have not fossilized.
I also thought his description of the "Church of Euthanasia" was telling. Especially the four pillars of their faith.
Not withstanding, I'm guessing that the "science" in the book was probably mostly accurate in capturing what "science" at the time of the writing was. Now that "Global Warming" has universally changed to "Climate Change" much of his references to rising oceans seem as quaint as discussions of light being conducted by the ether.
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