- Published: 12 June 2022
- ISBN: 9780753559710
- Imprint: Virgin Books
- Format: Paperback
- Pages: 448
- RRP: $29.99
The World Without Us
- Published: 12 June 2022
- ISBN: 9780753559710
- Imprint: Virgin Books
- Format: Paperback
- Pages: 448
- RRP: $29.99
Compelling ... jammed packed with fascinating "what ifs"
Guardian
Flesh-creepingly good fun . . . Food for thought
Independent
A powerful vision of a possible future for the earth
Sunday Times
A wonderful idea... a hugely enjoyable and thought-provoking book... Terrific
Evening Standard
A fascinating nonfiction eco-thriller
The New York Times Book Review
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 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
An exacting account of the processes by which things fall apart. The scope is breathtaking...the clarity and lyricism of the writing itself left me with repeated gasps of recognition about the human condition. I believe it will be a classic
Dennis Covington, author of National Book Award finalist Salvation on Sand Mountain
The book boasts an amazingly imaginative conceit that manages to tap into underlying fears and subtly inspire us to consider our interaction with the planet
The Washington Post
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
Fascinating, mordant, deeply intelligent, and beautifully written, The World Without Us depicts the spectacle of humanity's impact on the planet Earth in tragically poignant terms that go far beyond the dry dictates of science. This is a very important book for a species playing games with its own destiny
James Howard Kunstler, author of The Long Emergency
Marvellous...the first environmentalist not to preach, but to present us with the sober, humbling facts ... so intricate is his web of evidence, so seductive his argument, that he doesn't need to preach ... The effect of The World Without Us is a little like reading Pliny the Elder's history of the world: a sense of nature as the caster of spells and marvels, but with ourselves not as wide-eyed observers, nor as villains somehow separate from nature, but simply as resourceful and blundering
Daily Telegraph
This is not a book about the end of the world but about an imagined beginning ...The results of this huge thought-experiment are both fascinating and surprising. Fascinating for what they tell us about the impermanence of the works of man, and surprising for the simple reason that it soon becomes clear that our world would carry on regardless, indifferent to our demise
Daily Mail
Weisman's gripping fantasy will make most readers hope that at least some of us can stick around long enough to see how it all turns out
New York Times
An idea that is so lateral and clever, so powerfully evocative and masterfully executed that the only appropriate response is fervent envy
New Statesman
A wonderful idea ... a hugely enjoyable and thought-provoking book
Scotsman
Fascinating, absorbing
Good Book Guide
A quick, absorbing read - a summer beach book with brains
Bloomberg
Engrossing
New York Magazine
If you can stomach only one end-of-the world-as-we-know it story this summer, none is more audacious or interesting than Alan Weisman's The World Without Us
The Boston Globe
Drawing from hundreds of interviews with engineers, scientists and archaeologists, it unfolds like a thriller
Cal Flyn, Guardian Best Books about the Post-Human Earth