The World Without Us [Hardcover]

Alan Weisman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 10, 2007

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. If a virulent virus—or even the Rapture—depopulated Earth overnight, how long before all trace of humankind vanished? That's the provocative, and occasionally puckish, question posed by Weisman (An Echo in My Blood) in this imaginative hybrid of solid science reporting and morbid speculation. Days after our disappearance, pumps keeping Manhattan's subways dry would fail, tunnels would flood, soil under streets would sluice away and the foundations of towering skyscrapers built to last for centuries would start to crumble. At the other end of the chronological spectrum, anything made of bronze might survive in recognizable form for millions of years—along with one billion pounds of degraded but almost indestructible plastics manufactured since the mid-20th century. Meanwhile, land freed from mankind's environmentally poisonous footprint would quickly reconstitute itself, as in Chernobyl, where animal life has returned after 1986's deadly radiation leak, and in the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea, a refuge since 1953 for the almost-extinct goral mountain goat and Amur leopard. From a patch of primeval forest in Poland to monumental underground villages in Turkey, 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. (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The New Yorker

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.
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books (July 10, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312347294
• ISBN-13: 978-0312347291
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (316 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #107,910 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Author of the critically acclaimed New
York Times best seller The World
Without Us, Alan Weisman is an
award-winning journalist whose reports
have appeared in HarperÄôs, the New
York Times Magazine, Atlantic Monthly,
Discover, and Orion, among others,
and on National Public Radio. 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. He lives in
western Massachusetts.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

187 of 197 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Back to the Garden of Eden, July 20, 2007

By 

Smallchief - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The World Without Us (Hardcover)

This is a charming book on a macabre subject: if every person on earth died tomorrow what would happen to the works of man? Using New York as an example the author details the slow, inevitable destruction of the subways, bridges, buildings, the return of the forests and the animals, and the disposition of those things that never seem to go away: poisonous heavy metals, plastic, and radioactive waste.

He also describes the decay of man-made works in other parts of the world, including a vivid description of what would happen to an oil field in Texas if humans suddenly disappeared. That would be hell in the short term -- but some of the speculations about earth without humans sound pretty attractive: back to the Garden of Eden, before Adam, Eve, and the snake.

The book is a cautionary one, telling about the fate of earlier societies who outran the potential for their environment, and taking the long view of the human species -- up till and including the final demise when the sun becomes a big cinder about 5 billion years for now. Will the last work of man to survive be a plastic water bottle? An amusing section gives a voice to the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement -- which proposes that human beings help themselves become extinct. Another describes the Pioneer spacecraft, sent out to hunt for other forms of intelligent life in the Universe. All that other civilizations may know of us is contained on the spacecraft: Mozart, Chuck Berry, and a few other details, to be precise.

It's a fascinating read of well-reasoned speculation.

Smallchief

122 of 130 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, intriguing look at world without humans. Also, if you like post-apocalyptic books, July 22, 2007

By 

K. Corn "reviewer" (midwest, United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The World Without Us (Hardcover)

Basically, this focuses on a "what if" situation: what if something, be it the bird flu, a new virus or (fill in the blanks) destroyed all the people on Earth? What then? What would happen to our world, without us in it?

Using a combination of very solid research and science, the author gives readers a view of what would -and would not - endure -and for how long. He gives a look at the world shortly after we leave and then a futuristic look at its evolution from there, with various scenarios. I found it riveting to read. Also, it made me realize that, as important as we may consider ourselves, the earth could evolve and change without us, often in positive ways. It was humbling, at least for me.

Finally, the writer's style is just breathtaking. I can't sum it up here (it'd be like trying to describe a painting instead of seeing it firsthand) but the writing makes the book extremely rewarding. I'd have gotten through it, even if written by a less competent writer, because I find the subject matter inherently fascinating, but I'm grateful that this was so nicely done.

115 of 128 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Could have been better, November 13, 2007

By 

Andreas Mross (Sydney, Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The World Without Us (Hardcover)

I've always found this topic interesting, so when I heard that this book was coming out I rang the bookshop straight away and reserved a copy. Finding old ruins or remains in the bush fascinates me; an old fence running straight through thick scrub, or an abandoned railway cutting with trees growing through it. "Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!" After finishing the book though, I can't say I would go out of my way to recommend it. It's not bad.. just disappointing. The topic holds a lot of promise; this book just doesn't deliver.

The foundations are all there; the topic is novel and the amount of research the author has done and the creative thinking used should have provided more than enough material for an interesting book.

I think the problem is with the writing. The approach taken is very similar to that seen in Jared Diamond's books; in each chapter, introduce a different place in the world, discuss it's specific situation or history, then draw out a more general conclusion from the more specific situation. It's worked for Jared Diamond, but it doesn't work here. The problem is that in many chapters the author does too good a job of concealing what general point he is trying to make; several times I found myself thinking "This is a moderately interesting story... but what does it have to do with the topic of the book?" After finishing some chapters I found I still wasn't sure!

The writing style also grates. He uses a kind of journalistic, "reporter on the scene" approach. "Jim swivelled clockwise in his chair, as he revealed the true reason behind the drop in pH in the pacific's coral atolls!". There is a perplexing amount of fluff regarding scientist's hairstyles, what they're wearing, where they went to school and other filler. I guess the idea is to do the "popular science" "let's make science relevant to the common man" thing; by fleshing out the otherwise faceless scientists with details of their lives and personalities. Boring. If the science itself isn't interesting, don't expect the scientists to make up for it!

I also thought there could have been a lot more science in this book. There is a fair bit, but it's often just mentioned in passing and not explained in any detail. With the general style of the book, I guess maybe they didn't want to make it too "technical". The end result is that unless you have a fairly broad scientific education (I do) you are going to struggle to understand any of the brief explanations for phenomena described in the book. I often found myself wishing for a whole extra paragraph of explanation on the scientific aspects.

Instead we get more of a focus on philosophy, big picture musings and what I would call "poetic" writing. It didn't work for me.

There is also two quite different themes dealt with by this book: what will happen to our civilisation's artefacts (buildings, monuments, waste etc) after we are gone, and what will happen to the natural world after we are gone. Switching between the two gives a lack of focus.

I do hope Weisman writes more books. Writing style can always be improved (just write more books!), but imagination and insight can't be fashioned so easily. The author is an imaginative thinker, and reading more from him would be interesting.