The World Without Us | 
 enlarge | Author: Alan Weisman
Publisher: Picador
Category: Book
List Price: $15.00
Buy New: $8.29
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Avg. Customer Rating:  236 reviews
Sales Rank: 1027
Media: Paperback
Edition: Reprint
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 432
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.1 x 5.5 x 0.8
ISBN: 0312427905
Dewey Decimal Number: 304.2
EAN: 9780312427900
ASIN: 0312427905
Publication Date: August 5, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: HARDCOVER - discounted, minor shelf wear
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Product Description
Time #1 Nonfiction Book of 2007
Entertainment Weekly #1 Nonfiction Book of 2007
Finalist for the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award
Salon Book Awards 2007
Amazon Top 100 Editors’ Picks of 2007 (#4)
Barnes and Noble 10 Best of 2007: Politics and Current Affairs
Kansas City Star’s Top 100 Books of the Year 2007
Mother Jones’ Favorite Books of 2007
South Florida Sun-Sentinel Best Books of the Year 2007
Hudson’s Best Books of 2007
St. Louis Post-Dispatch Best Books of 2007
St. Paul Pioneer Press Best Books of 2007
If human beings disappeared instantaneously from the Earth, what would happen? How would the planet reclaim its surface? What creatures would emerge from the dark and swarm? How would our treasured structures--our tunnels, our bridges, our homes, our monuments--survive the unmitigated impact of a planet without our intervention? In his revelatory, bestselling account, Alan Weisman draws on every field of science to present an environmental assessment like no other, the most affecting portrait yet of humankind's place on this planet.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 231 more reviews...
 An interesting essay October 3, 2008
Alan Weisman's book is an extension of a previous essay article, and unfortunately, that is how it often reads. The chapters (and sections within chapters) jump from subject to subject and through different time lines without real feeling for order or reason. The statements he makes are backed up by well researched evidence and via discussion with some very interesting characters but sometimes, one gets lost in trying to figure out what the point is of each section, rather than go with the flow.
However, he does make some very interesting and important points in regards to human impact and the fact that there are large numbers of species and populations that will not even notice that we are gone. He does also point out the fact that some of our inventions are likely to still be hanging around for mellenia and beyond.
Overall it is an interesting read, though I feel that if it was written by someone with more of a science background rather than journalistic, than it would have made for excellent reading.
Interesting Conjecture on the State of the World Without Humans October 1, 2008
Weisman offers us an interesting glimpse of how the world would be if humanity ceased to exist tomorrow. He explores several interesting places around the world and asks experts in various Fields such as Plastics, Horticulture, Forestry, Pertroleum, and others how long it would take for various manmade structures to deteriorate and what the effects of this would be?
Over all he makes it sound as though 20th and 21st Century humans are a Bane to the Earth and it would be better for us to become extinct. He does however show how many people are making progress in making others aware of environmental condidtions and trying to reverse their impact.
His best chapter describes what would happen to New York City if people disappeared and there was no one left to repair the infrastructure. He describes how the roads, buildings, sewers, subways, and other manmade objects would slowly disappear into the reemerging forest like Ur of the Chaldees disappeared into the Desert when the course of the Euphrates changed.
Another chapter I found interesting was the one on the Petroleum producing centers of the Houston and Galveston areas in Texas. The 'nuclear winter' that might hapen if humans disappeared and the fascilities fell into disrepair and exploded. This was especially poignant this week as the Colonial Pipeline mentioned was shut down By hurricane Gustav and we all the way east in Charlotte NC has no Gasoline!!
I would say it is a great book to make you more environmentally conscious. It is also a great What if to make you ponder a Future without us.
The World Without Us September 15, 2008
A wonderful book. Anyone who cares about the world they live it should read it. And those that do not should read it twice.
 Breath-taking in scope, meticulous in research September 6, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
One of the most fascinating non-fiction titles that I have ever read in my entire life and, believe me, I have read some very good ones.
Written by Alan Weisman, an award-winning journalist, who imagines what the world would be like if all of a sudden humans vanished from the face of the earth .... but not without a trace. He uses this hypothetical scenario to talk about the changes man has brought about to earth and how long would the human creations last without us (yes, the 'trace' I was talking about).
He takes this wonderful premise as a vehicle to discuss such diverse topics as human and animal evolution, air and water pollution, animal and plant extinction, natural disasters, Mayan history, NASA's Voyager and Pioneer spacecrafts, the fascinating history of Cyprus, the fate of 441 active nuclear reactors of the world, the history of the Panama Canal, the ecology of the uninhabited demilitarized zone between North and South Korea, the ramifications of the Chernobyl disaster, the future of human art, among other things.
The book discusses too many disciplines of science to name here.
Breathtaking in its scope and meticulous in research, this book is definitely a great intellectually stimulating read.
It's a hugely informative, highly readable, immensely entertaining read which is breath-taking in its concept and has been called 'one of the grandest thought experiments of our time.'
Important starting place for understanding the world without us... August 18, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
There have been many reviews of this book, and I agree with most of the complimentary comments. Instead of rehashing these comments, I'll focus on two shortcomings. One, like similar books covering this subject, the author focuses too intently on one major urban center: New York City. And while this provides a microcosm for other cities around the world, I feel that the book would have benefited greatly from focusing on vignettes from cities around the world, rather than devoting so much time to New York. Certainly, the author discusses other locations, but NYC dominates. Second, and perhaps less important, is the author's overuse of lists. Especially annoying in the audiobook version, the frequent lists in the book are an unwelcome and tedious distraction from the flow of the writing. Lists of animal species, tree types, etc., are unnecessary and disruptive. I found that these often took me out of the feeling of the work and caused me to skip ahead or simply to put the book down. This is not to knock the entire work as being unreadable, simply that this particular neance I found very annoying.
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