The World Without Us

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The World Without Us (Hardcover)
Alan Weisman
BUZZFLASH REVIEWS

With four star reviews up the kazoo, this is a book based on a fascinating premise and written with knowledge, intrigue and skill.

The question is this: What would happen to earth, its current structures and the environment if the human race suddenly vanished from the planet?

This is not science fiction, but rather a gripping exploration of what would be the scientific and ecological impact on our planet if humans ceased to exist?

Thought-provoking in so many different ways, it makes us reflect upon what we are doing to destroy the earth -- and what a gift the earth is to human life.

"The World Without Us" is based on such an ingenious premise. It even explains how the infrastructure of our cities would fare without humans.

Weisman closes his preface with these thoughts:

"Yet it might not be so different, either. Nature has been through worse losses before, and refilled empty niches. And even today, there are still a few Earthly spots where all our senses can inhale a living memory of this Eden before we were here. Inevitably they invite us to wonder how nature might flourish if granted the chance.

"Since we're imagining, why not also dream of a way for nature to prosper that doesn't depend on our demise? We are, afer all, mammals ourselves. Every life-form adds to this vast pageant. With our passing, might some lost contribution of ours leave the planet a bit more impoverished.

"Is it possible that, instead of heaving a huge biological sign of relief, the world without us would miss us?"

Nah, probably not.

"This is one of the grandest thought experiments of our time, a tremendous feat of imaginative reporting!"

--Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature and Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and The Durable Future

“The imaginative power of The World Without Us is compulsive and nearly hypnotic--make sure you have time to be kidnapped into Alan Weisman’s alternative world before you sit down with the book, because you won’t soon return. This is a text that has a chance to change people, and so make a real difference for the planet.”

--Charles Wohlforth, author of L.A. Times Book Prize-winning The Whale and the Supercomputer

“Alan Weisman offers us a sketch of where we stand as a species that is both illuminating and terrifying. His tone is conversational and his affection for both Earth and humanity transparent.”

--Barry Lopez, author of Arctic Dreams

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 Booklist:

Starred Review

Given the burgeoning human population and the phenomenal reach of our technologies, humankind has literally become a force of nature. We are inadvertently changing the climate; altering, polluting, and eradicating ecosystems; and driving evolution as other organisms struggle to adapt to a new human-made world. So what would happen if humankind suddenly vanished? Journalist Weisman, author of Echo in My Blood (1999), traveled the world to consult with experts and visit key sites, and his findings are arresting to say the least. He learned that without constant vigilance, New York's subways would immediately flood, and Houston's complex "petroscape" would spectacularly self-destruct.

Weisman visits an abandoned resort on the coast of Cyprus and marvels over nature's ready reclamation. Marine biologists share sobering information about the staggering amount of plastic particles in ocean waters as well as vast floating islands of trash. Weisman is a thoroughly engaging and clarion writer fueled by curiosity and determined to cast light rather than spread despair. His superbly well researched and skillfully crafted stop-you-in-your-tracks report stresses the underappreciated fact that humankind's actions create a ripple effect across the web of life.

As for the question of what would endure in our absence, Weisman lists a "redesigned atmosphere," astronomical amounts of plastic and automobile tires, nuclear waste and other inorganic poisons, and, eerily, the radio waves that will carry our television broadcasts through the universe for all time.