Description
A penetrating, page-turning tour of a post-human Earth
The World Without Us offers an utterly original approach to questions of humanity's impact on the planet: Alan Weisman 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. 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 read-able touch, it looks deeply at our effects on the planet in a way that no other book has.
ISBN:9780312377885
