Earth Odyssey (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "The light is mute in Chongqing nearly all the time in winter..." (more)
Key Phrases: fossil fuel lobby, environmental tax reform, antipolitical politics, United States, Hong Kong, Soviet Union (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Paying his own way, Mark Hertsgaard set out on a world tour in 1991 wondering what people thought of environmental problems. Earth Odyssey is his result, a sweeping and provocative work of travel and serious reporting that covers 19 countries and reveals, with often stark reality and vision, the legacy and prospects for our global environment.

Hertsgaard focuses on and reveals much of his story through the people who guide him and whom he meets along the way. After touring a state-owned paper factory in Chongqing, China, and seeing billowing clouds of chlorine and foaming rivers, Hertsgaard hears his guide and interpreter Zhenbing mourning for his country. In Sudan, Hertsgaard visits areas of extreme famine and poverty, where "the environment is no abstraction" to the people who live there. Through interviews with Vaclav Havel, Jacques Cousteau, and Al Gore, as well as research and philosophy about the roles of industry and technology, the global environmental picture is etched skillfully chapter by chapter. When at Africa's Lake Turkana, Hertsgaard delineates in clarity and detail the evolution of our species and the history of technology to build perspective on our current lifestyles, values, and environmental problems.

Earth Odyssey is not only a good book, but an important one--even essential--grasping the true human predicament as we face a worldwide environmental breakdown.--Byron Ricks

From Publishers Weekly

An ambitious report on the global environmental crisis, Hertsgaard's (A Day in the Life) new book is based on his round-the-world odyssey, from 1991-1997. Refuting skeptics, he aims to show that Earth's ecological crisis is real and deepening. His frontline dispatches on air and water pollution, acid rain and resource depletion in China, Africa, Brazil, Thailand, Greece, Russia and Eastern Europe are chilling. Drawing on interviews with Czech president Vaclav Havel and energy expert Amory Lovins, as well as with public health officials, UN administrators, economists and Greenpeace activists, Hertsgaard details several interrelated crises: the worldwide impact of automobiles; runaway population growth; the environmental consequences of Western-influenced consumption patterns in developing nations; nuclear waste disposal, nuclear terrorism and the threat of nuclear war. Hertsgaard's travelogue is not without adventure: he retraces Winston Churchill's 1907 trip across Africa and explores the Amazon rain forest in a riverboat with a Brazilian family. Regarding the U.S., Hertsgaard proposes a "Global Green Deal" for the Clinton administration. The West, he says, should take the lead in uniting rich and poor nations by sponsoring public investments in nascent industries such as solar power. In addition, he suggests overhauling tax policies to encourage corporate giants to protect ecosystems. This eloquent wake-up call deserves a wide readership. Agent, Ellen Levine. $40,000 ad/promo; first serial to Atlantic Monthly; author tour.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Broadway; 1st edition (December 29, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0767900588
• ISBN-13: 978-0767900584
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.7 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,050,672 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A compelling view of the future of planet Earth., October 17, 1999

By	Andrew Horner (Erskine, Scotland) - See all my reviews

This is an excellent book, written in plain English with clear explanations, great examples and vivid depictions of the future we face if we don't get our act together now. Perhaps the most frightening part of the book was the detail of Al Gore who, as an ardent ecologist wrote a book on environmental issues only to throw it all to the wind when he became Vice President of the USA. If he can do this, what hope for the rest of us? I recommend this book to any student, at any level, who wishes to understand the environmental issues we face. However, be warned - this book will depress you! There are no holds barred and you will come away with a feeling of hopelessness.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Comprehensive and compelling!, September 21, 1999

By	[e-mail] (Mill Valley, California) - See all my reviews

The real story of our global environmental crisis that holds one like a great novel. Bravo! Mark Hertsgaard. For your daring, and your insight, and for taking us all on your travels around the world that we might all see what our consumer oblivion is doing to our precious planet earth. This book is a great read, friends. More than a nudge that it's time to wake up - it inspires one to do so, and to tap our neighbor on the head too.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Our environmental crisis, November 16, 2003

By	Chapulina R (Tovarischi Imports, USA/RUS) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

This review is from: Earth Odyssey: Around the World in Search of Our Environmental Future (Paperback)

Investigative reporter Mark Hertsgaard spent six years traveling around the world, gathering material for this book. This is not strictly a scientific treatise (although he conducted extensive research into his topics). Rather, he reports through the eyes of the people who live in the environmentally damaged places he visited. The theme of the book is how technology has both benefitted and harmed the planet and its inhabitants, and how greed continues to threaten our existence. His accounts of wanton destruction of nature in the 19th century make the reader gasp with dismay over the short-sightedness of our predecessors: the damming of a mighty river and its magnificent waterfall; the murder of the largest, oldest sequoia on earth. (Two of the examples which brought me to tears.) The horror is: the destruction, the contamination, and waste are still happening. And not only at the hands of totalitarian regimes or ignorant third-world peasants, but due to the callousness of greedy American corporations and government lobbies. The conclusions of Chapter Three, "The Irrisistable Automobile", will come as no surprise to most American readers, although the images of the perpetually gridlocked traffic-jams of fume-choked Asian cities astonished even this rider of Southern California freeways. Statistics of the predicted explosion in automobile sales world wide are especially ominous. This book was published in 1999 and exposes the hypocrisy of the Clinton administration in paying lip service to environmental issues while simultaneously caving to the demands of the powerful fossil fuel lobby. If Chapter Three is gloomy, Chapter Four, "To the Nuclear Lighthouse", is utterly terrifying. The account of Hertsgaard's visits to the most blighted areas of the former USSR is preceeded by a dismal, just recently uncensored history of the Soviets' worst nuclear disasters. While everyone knows about Chernobyl, few people knew about the radiating of the Siberian region of Chelyabinsk. Few, that is, other than the hapless residents who've been suffering its effects for years. With the aid of his translator, Russian author and photographer Vlad Tamarov, Hertsgaard conducted a relentless expose' of the deliberate coverups of "incidents" at nuke plants and shipping lanes, which irreversibly poisoned crops, fisheries, and even the water table. Even more worrisome than the damage already done are Hertsgaard's reports of poorly inventoried and practically unguarded nuclear stockpiles in volatile republics such as Kazakhstan. The American reader who attributes Soviet environmental crimes to Communist cruelty is in for an ugly shock -- Hertsgaard then documents identical coverups by our own government, of similar "incidents" on our own soil! From Russia, the author journeyed to China and Africa to report on overpopulation and its adverse effects on nature, health, and standards of living. The bleak narrative ends on a hopeful note: "Sustainable Development and the Triumph of Capitalism". Since the publication of "Earth Odyssey", the Bush administration has all but declared war on the environment, so even that fleeting hope now appears elusive.