The World Without Us

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Editorial reviews

Product Description

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Customer reviews

review by: date: 2008-11-20 rating:
life will find a way - but we should too
It's an easy speculation to say that without humans, the earth will restore, recleanse, rectify itself. Indeed, in his book The World Without Us, Alan Weisman repeatedly hints to the reader that the world doesn't need us as much as we need it. But Weisman goes beyond the obvious implication and details just how incredibly short-sighted we humans have been in just a brief time on this planet.

Weisman thoroughly stresses home the point that despite our tendencies toward toxicity, life will indeed find a way, whether it be millennia or billennia. There are a whole lot of ideas to take away from this thought experiment, for example the futility of our marvelous infrastructure once we are no longer around to monitor it; what will happen when wonders like the Chunnel, the Panama Canal, our volatile oil refineries and nuclear reactors/repositories as well as our subways have no one to flip the off switch or close the valve? How will the unmeasurable amount of polymers (plastic) dumped in our oceans annually begin to degrade, and what are the hopes of a hungry microbe that evolves the ability to feed on them?

Of the many thought provoking speculations and projections Weisman so meticulously researches and thoughtfully relates, he proposes the irony that the realization of our collective death may just perhaps contribute to the saving of ourselves. Interviewing the organizer of the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, and yes it it's a real organization, he postulates that if humans were really serious about curbing overpopulation, thereby eliminating juvenile delinquency among other issues, we might just have an epiphany:

" ...spiritual awakening would replace panic, because a dawning realization that as human life drew to a close, it was improving. There would be more than enough to eat, and resources would again be plentiful, including water. The seas would replenish. Because new housing wouldn't be necessary, so would forests and wetlands.

...Like retired business executives who suddenly find serenity by tending a garden, Knight envisions us spending our remaining time helping rid an increasingly natural world of unsightly and now useless clutter, in pursuit of which we'd once swapped something alive and lovely." (p.243)

As improbable it may be that people would go to such extremes or even somehow suddenly become extinct, Weisman's book is an ambitious and enlightening experiment that brings us closer to acknowledging our impact upon and responsibility to the world, while we're still with it.

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review by: date: 2008-11-17 rating:
I agree with the other reviews
Very well written. Not as much detail in some places, but given the scope of the topic, that's forgiveable. It's interesting to note how little we do that will be permanent. Especially modern housing. Great reading!

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review by: date: 2008-11-15 rating:
A fascinating intellectual exercise
The World Without Us concerns an interesting hypothetical scenario. What happens to the earth if humanity disappears? The cause of humanity's departure is irrelevant. Instead, what becomes of our cities? What happens to the massive human-created infrastructure that litters the planet? What are the long term effects of the environmental damage humanity has caused? What happens to animals and plants that we have directly affected over the centuries? Alan Weisman explores the answers to these fascinating, if somewhat morbid questions. Some people have criticized this book as a purely intellectual exercise with no real use or merit. My rejoinder is simple. We as humans cannot begin understand our impact on out planet without investigating our planet's reactions to us. This book does an excellent job of explaining the impact of the human footprint. Plus, I am admittedly a sucker for hypothetical scenarios such as this. What if? That has always been something that has interested me, and Alan Weisman looks into a very interesting and important What If? scenario.

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review by: date: 2008-10-30 rating:
Wiesman preaches the tenants of animism
Weisman refers to many less-complex life-forms as our ancestors.
Weisman prays to "Mother Earth" at the very end of the book.
These are tenants of Animism or worshiping animals because they are your ancestors.
Weisman proposes that watching animals and plants is more enjoyable than having raising children.
Weisman anthromorphsizes evolution giving it or animals the power to design their genetic mutations.

I won't even go into the way he practically deifies "Natural Selection" as if it actually could create new genetic information.

The two interesting things I took from it were that "science" doesn't know how the oil deposits formed under the ocean and that "science" claims there are actual tree parts multiple millions of years old that have not fossilized.

I also thought his description of the "Church of Euthanasia" was telling. Especially the four pillars of their faith.

Not withstanding, I'm guessing that the "science" in the book was probably mostly accurate in capturing what "science" at the time of the writing was. Now that "Global Warming" has universally changed to "Climate Change" much of his references to rising oceans seem as quaint as discussions of light being conducted by the ether.


review by: date: 2008-10-15 rating:
Great Book
One other person wrote that this book is fascinating but depressing and that is why he/she chose to give it less than 5 stars.

I beg to differ, one of the reasons why I gave it 5 stars is because it was depressing. It caused me a lot of anguish reading how much we have damaged this planet and how part of this damage will take 1000s of years to go away. I guess that would have been part of the message of this book, which it delivered on superbly.

Another user also chose to give it less than 5 stars because it had too much focus on NYC and not other places. Again I beg to differ; the book did devote a whole chapter to Houston. Also I do not think this a huge shortcoming for the book, after all, it was written by an "American" for a largely American audience. Additionally, I think the author was limited by space. He could have gone on and on about other places, but he would have ended at something like 500+ pages. I think the book did deliver on it's message within the limitation of 350+ pages.

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