Visit Sunny Chernobyl: And Other Adventures in the World's Most Polluted Places by Andrew Blackwell

Sep 22, 2012 Caroline rated it 3 of 5 stars

This author has a weird bee in his bonnet about finding the beautiful, the friendly, the cosy and the endearing in the least attractive of places. In his introduction he describes a visit to Kanpur which says it all. Kanpur was recently awarded the title of “India’s Most Polluted City” by its national government.

What followed was an intensive, three-day tour of dysfunctional sewage-treatment plants, illegal industrial dumps, poisonous tanneries, and feces-strewn beaches. The crowning moment was...more This author has a weird bee in his bonnet about finding the beautiful, the friendly, the cosy and the endearing in the least attractive of places. In his introduction he describes a visit to Kanpur which says it all. Kanpur was recently awarded the title of “India’s Most Polluted City” by its national government.

What followed was an intensive, three-day tour of dysfunctional sewage-treatment plants, illegal industrial dumps, poisonous tanneries, and feces-strewn beaches. The crowning moment was our visit to a traditional Hindu bathing festival in which scores of pilgrims dunked themselves in a rank stretch of the sacred – but horribly contaminated – river Ganges, collecting bottles of holy, chromium-laced water for use back home. All this, and not another tourist in sight.

Inexplicably, Kanpur became the highlight of my entire time in India. Kanpur. I couldn’t account for it. Did I have a thing for industrial waste? Was I just some kind of environmental rubbernecker?

That wasn’t it. In Kanpur, I had found something. Something I hadn’t encountered anywhere else. I couldn’t shake it: the sense of having stumbled into a wholly unexpected place. Of having seen something there, among the effluent pipes and the open latrines. A trace of the future, and of the present. And of something else – something inscrutably, mystifyingly beautiful.

What is it about this man? Time and time again we see him drawn to places notorious for their pollution. Sometimes he was underwhelmed – Chernobyl turns out to be a paradise for wildlife, and it is now safe enough for him to visit the actual nuclear site. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch turns out to be virtually invisible to the human eye, and not at all the solid carpet of floating trash that he had hoped for. The Amazon rainforest, whilst suffering some deforestation for beef cattle grazing, soy bean crops and tropical hardwood logging – is surprisingly well regulated. Landowners in Brazil are legally bound to leave 80% of their land as native forest – even giant soy farms have to keep to this ratio. Green initiatives there have made a big difference.

In other places though the pollution is still full on.... Canada is apparently second only to Saudi Arabia in its proven petroleum reserves, but nearly all of these are in the form of oil sand – “a thick grimy sludge, buried underground....It takes the world’s largest shovels, digging vast canyons out of what was once Alberta’s primeval forest; and the world’s largest trucks, delivering huge quantities of the sticky, black sand into massive separators that need insane amounts of heat and water to boil the sand until the oil floats out of it.... This is not a pretty process. Then there is Guiyi in China, whose whole economy is based upon tearing apart old electronics and reselling the components and raw materials. It’s a dirty business. Computers are full of all kinds of things that are bad for you – things other than the Internet – and when you tear them apart, or melt them down, or saw them into pieces, a portion of those toxic substances is released. In a place like Guiyu, with what I’ll call relaxed workplace standards, you end up with workshops full of lead dust and other heavy metals and clouds of who the hell knows what floating through the streets. The water is laced with PCBs and PBDEs and other hazardous acronyms. The air, the water, the dust – in Guiyu it comes with promises of cancer, nerve damage, and poisoned childhood development.”

All in all there were some chapters in the book I found fascinating – like the ones about the Amazon rainforest, and electronics recycling in China. But there were others I found boring. His writing about his uneventful voyage to explore the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, or his lengthy description of going walkabout along the Yamuna River in India, were less than inspiring.

He’s a warm and funny man though. A bit like Bill Bryson. He also enjoys talking to people and he does it well. The book moved forward on the stories and insights of the people he interviewed - and that was good. I also loved the quirky and cryptic references to his girlfriend and then not-girlfriend back home. These references were so out of context re the book, but so in character re the author. I do hope he meets someone nice soon. He needs someone to take him on a good holiday.

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Sep 29, 2012 Stephanie rated it 4 of 5 stars

I felt a little conflicted about this book. Taking the book at face value, I really enjoyed it. Blackwell has a surprising way with words and his story telling is at times laugh out loud funny and endearing. Overall, he's not the investigative journalist many people assume he would be with writing a book about "the most polluted places on earth." I would have liked a deeper investigation into many of the places he visits, but that's not the point of his book. He put himself out there for an adve...more

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Mar 22, 2013 Eshonstrom rated it 4 of 5 stars

This review originally appeared on my blog: www.wildtracts.blogspot.com

Andrew Blackwell’s hilarious and deeply thoughtful new book, Visit Sunny Chernobyl, is a harbinger of things to come within the genres of travel books and environmental writing. The old guards of activist green screeds – Bill McKibbon, Rachel Carson, and even Michael Pollan – write from the panic room. Their books represent a collective neurosis about just how badly we’ve (read here: western culture) fucked up our planet. The...more

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Nov 11, 2012 Richard rated it 3 of 5 stars

Like any good travel book, Andrew gives us a feel for the places he visits and muses about what it all means. Except he's not visiting Victoria Falls or St. Petersburg. He's visiting Chernobyl, the Eastern Pacific Garbage Patch, Port Arthur Texas, and other grungy places. His narrative is fun and sometimes insightful. He really doesn't think much of the oil industry, and that started to wear a little thin. And you probably don't want to read the chapter on Indian river pollution while eating (as...more Like any good travel book, Andrew gives us a feel for the places he visits and muses about what it all means. Except he's not visiting Victoria Falls or St. Petersburg. He's visiting Chernobyl, the Eastern Pacific Garbage Patch, Port Arthur Texas, and other grungy places. His narrative is fun and sometimes insightful. He really doesn't think much of the oil industry, and that started to wear a little thin. And you probably don't want to read the chapter on Indian river pollution while eating (as I did) unless you can tolerate descriptions of fecal matter during your meal. That chapter aside, Blackwell's book was entertaining and informative at any time of the day or night.

There is a subplot involving his personal non-traveling life which I will not reveal the details of. No spoilers here!

A couple of observations in the Amazonian rainforest chapter particularly caught my eye. First (starting at page 171), Blackwell talked about the creation of the world's first first national park (Yellowstone in 1872). It was at that time that our ideal was formed of nature as being fundamentally incompatible with the presence of humanity. The Native Americans, who had lived in and around Yellowstone for probably thousands of years, were kicked out in order to preserve the area in its "natural" state. And so began the judgmental aspect of environmentalism that continues in spades to this day.

The second thing I particularly want to remember is this little quote from a Greenpeace person, speaking of their negotiations with Cargill (p. 199): "If you ask the impossible, you never get a to solution." The broader quote is this: "...for Sena [another activist], the only solution for the problems would be to put Cargill out, to send all the soy farmers back to the south. That is not reasonable. We always knew that at some point we would have to sit at the table with Cargill to get an agreement. If you ask the impossible, you never get to a solution." Wise words, especially after the just-concluded US presidential campaign. I guess the trick is to properly figure out just what the impossible is, and then go from there.(less)

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Oct 18, 2012 Steve Henley rated it 3 of 5 stars

I wanted to read this after hearing the author interviewed on CBC Radio.

The first two essays, which I remember him discussing during the radio interview, turned out to be the best of the book for me.

I have spent some time working in the Fort McMurray area. The author's characterization of the projects and the Oil Sands Discovery Centre is spot on.

Before going myself, I remember speaking to senior citizen friends of the family who were all convinced that everything was just great after going on...more

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Sep 11, 2012 Jaci rated it 4 of 5 stars

Of course, the title grabbed me but this is a fascinating glimpse at ecotourism by someone with an interesting sense of humor. Andrew Blackwell visits Chernobyl (Ukraine), Northern Alberta (Canada), Port Arthur (Texas), the Pacific, the Amazon, China, and India to see for himself what human beings can do and what that means for the future.

p.5: "Of, fission. People make it sound so complicated, but any chump can get the basics."
p.7: "If journalism can teach us anything, it's that local people are...more Of course, the title grabbed me but this is a fascinating glimpse at ecotourism by someone with an interesting sense of humor. Andrew Blackwell visits Chernobyl (Ukraine), Northern Alberta (Canada), Port Arthur (Texas), the Pacific, the Amazon, China, and India to see for himself what human beings can do and what that means for the future.

p.5: "Of, fission. People make it sound so complicated, but any chump can get the basics."
p.7: "If journalism can teach us anything, it's that local people are a powerful tool to save us from our own fecklessness and incompetence. We call them fixers."
p.19: "It seemed there were no more than a handful of Chernobylinterinform guides..It only added to the sense that I had found a traveler's dream: an entire region that--although badly contaminated--was beautiful, interesting, and as yet unmolested by hordes of other visitors."
p.31: "...we will continue down the generations, building--shell by shell--a nest of giant radioactive Russian dolls."
p.56: "The wheel itself was more than forty feet tall...It was the bastard offspring of the Eiffel Tower and the Queensboro Bridge, abandoned by its parents, raised by feral tanks."
p.172: "As a result, some of the places we consider most pristine, most wild, are in some ways deeply artificial. A popular park like Yellowstone is probably more controlled, more managed, than the Exclusion Zone of Chernobyl."
p.226: "We also hold up these poster children--Linfen, Port Arthur, Chernobyl--to tell ourselves that the problems are over there. And we'd like to keep it that way."
p.270: "And because a holy river has such purifying power, it is actually the perfect recipient for all your most impure waste--sewage, corpses, and so forth--which by mere contact with the water will be cleansed. So there is no paradox in the state of India's rivers after all."
p.295: "...because we were the asteroid. The world had already ended, with a whimper, and also it didn't end. Now we inhabit the ended, unending world that came afterward."(less)

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Aug 24, 2012 Laurence rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: travel

An existential travel narrative takes Andrew Blackwell around to a couple (6-7) of the 'most' polluted places on the planet. His writing style beautifully expresses his take on the intricacies of the physical world (both natural and unnatural) in the places he visits, as well as his unfolding understanding of pollution and development. Written in highly endearing, enveloping, first-hand prose; I loved his writing style. Some (many) of his trips don't actually get him to see the mystified mountai...more

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Aug 18, 2012 Brooks rated it 4 of 5 stars

Environmental tourism’s next great idea – visiting the most polluted places on the planet. Everyone’s love’s a top ten list – how about the 10 most polluted places? The author tours us through the exclusion zone of Chernobyl – which is rapidly becoming Europe’s largest wilderness zone without people, the tar sands region of Alberta which is an engineer’s wild fantasy of big machines, and there are even people who love Port Arthur Texas. He takes a voyage with a miss-guided group of environmental...more

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Dec 12, 2012 T. Edmund rated it 5 of 5 stars

If while picking up this book you're concerned this may be environmental or greenie propaganda hidden in a humorous title, worry no more. Blackwell, despite a keen sense of the environment is a genuine pollution voyeur, a main with a love of ruin.

There is a good balance found within this book. While Blackwell's shared experiences of pollutourism are imparted with a unique visceral glee, he also successfully imbibes us with the history and science of each 'attraction.' Along the way Blackwell als...more

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Nov 16, 2012 Patrick rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: eclectic, outdoors, social-commentary, environment

This is kind of like Steven Colbert visiting crazily polluted places. The author affects (or claims he doesn't) this fascination and love for messed up global scars. His sardonic commentary can get a little annoying, but I have come around and am enjoying his sidebars and comments more as I read. I may change my mind as I continue, but so far it is eons better than [Moby Duck] so far.

He drops the Colbert tone randomly sometimes though. In the Alberta tar sands mine chapter, he is much more openl...more This is kind of like Steven Colbert visiting crazily polluted places. The author affects (or claims he doesn't) this fascination and love for messed up global scars. His sardonic commentary can get a little annoying, but I have come around and am enjoying his sidebars and comments more as I read. I may change my mind as I continue, but so far it is eons better than [Moby Duck] so far.

He drops the Colbert tone randomly sometimes though. In the Alberta tar sands mine chapter, he is much more openly critical and worried about the destruction of huge swaths of forest and nature, while he claims to just enjoy the beautiful wildlife preserve of Chernobyl.

The explanations of the places he visits are fascinating and sobering. Google picture of Alberta tar sands mining and it really makes you doubt the wisdom of doing the same in Utah and Colorado.

Finished: There are 5 star moments and explorations in the book and 1-2 star random philosophizing.

I was interested in every place he went and mostly enjoyed his approach of talking to whomever he could meet and showing kind of a slice-of-life of people living in/near these polluted places. The depleted, but still holy poop rivers of India are very sad. His asides into his personal life and heartbreak were mostly OK to me as they were short and did relate to his experience in each place as the people constantly asked him if he was married.

I didn't like the bits and pieces of personal philosophy that popped out because that was when the book got pretentious. It was very interesting to read sympathetic accounts of both sides of the soybean farms destroying the Amazon Rainforest; it was annoying to read his weird critique that most environmentalists are hypocrites and we should just enjoy the beauty of polluted places, even as he showed us the horrible effects of the pollution. There was also a lot of language in spurts. It's as much a look-how-clever-I-am memoir as an environmental book. His actual cleverness and the extremely interesting places he goes mostly make up for it, and there are some laugh out loud lines and situations.

Still, the good far outweighed the bad for me and I think others would like this if you know what you're getting into. 3.33 stars (less)

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Mar 13, 2013 Mikey B. rated it 5 of 5 stars

Recommended to Mikey B. by: Caroline

This is an immensely informative book on different types of pollution world wide. It’s also a great travelogue as the author unearths information and explores the personalities who live in these areas. One of the strengths of the book is the variety of sites under scrutiny. The author is not out to lay blame on evil-doers; but he literally exposes what life is like in these areas.

The diversity of habitats gives us a view of how the people live – except in one area, but a little about this later....more This is an immensely informative book on different types of pollution world wide. It’s also a great travelogue as the author unearths information and explores the personalities who live in these areas. One of the strengths of the book is the variety of sites under scrutiny. The author is not out to lay blame on evil-doers; but he literally exposes what life is like in these areas.

The diversity of habitats gives us a view of how the people live – except in one area, but a little about this later. We visit Chernobyl where there are actually tour guides who can take us to view the radioactive areas (with meters). The guides seem almost nonchalant about where they are – do they plan on having children in the future one wonders? Through-out the book we are given an inner view of the people who daily live with their pollution. From the outside it all seems so awful; but for those on the inside it has become a way of life and they make a living from it – like the people of Linfen, China who work in the coal mines – or who make their living from those who work in them. What about the little children in the Chinese village dismantling old computer parts to extract the gold, metals... But doing this exposes them to inhaling contaminants as well. Or for that matter the people who live in Port Arthur, Texas – they do want better treatment to clean up the toxicity from their various levels of government, but they don’t all want to move out. Even the people up in Fort McMurray – certainly one of the bleakest and colder places to live – do not view their home as “God-Awful”.

Perhaps, in a sense, it’s the way rural folks view city people – as living in congestion, smog, noise, crime – all this negativity and more; yet those in the city do not experience this as a “hell on earth”.

In the Amazon we are given different views of pollution – or the nuances of the destruction of the rain forest. Who is causing the most problems – is it the loggers, the farmers (and even this is broken down into different types of farming), or is it the cattlemen, or the road-builders? In India the government is oblivious and raw sewage (namely feces) continues flowing into its sacred rivers. The author takes us on a pilgrimage protest, but sadly we sense that little will be accomplished.

We are also taken on a Pacific Ocean voyage to see the detritus of modern society that floats about in a tremendous whirlpool – size unknown – and “nobody” really lives here. Fishing nets are scooped up. And what is even more frightening is what cannot be seen below the surface. The plastic bags and styrofoam cups are all being whittled down into microscopic particles and absorbed toxically into the oceans’ life processes.

I do take issue with the authors’ views on preserving forever nature sites – he seemed to have a negative view. We need to keep areas unaffected by men’s imprint. The author feels that we have already transgressed on many preserves – but these infringements can be controlled by government legislation. As Theodore Roosevelt said of the Grand Canyon “You cannot improve on it”.

The author states correctly that we have created all this pollution to sustain our lifestyles, enabling us to live in great comfort and wander the globe. It all becomes a Catch-22.
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Jul 25, 2012 Bethia rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: nonfiction, most-recommended

Imagine a witty, breezily well written travelogue highlighting some of the most toxic places on earth. Then imagine an author and traveler with the insight of a researcher and the guilessness and humor of a wide-eyed adventurer and you have a fascinating guide to places which, from my naive perspective, seem to be not of this earth.

While I eagerly read along, gaining deeper insight to what modern industry, first world life styles and the exploding population of humans is wreaking upon our plane...more

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Oct 18, 2012 Stacia rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012

I finished Visit Sunny Chernobyl today. (And I made my computer guru kid read the section on China where they break-down/recycle electronic components.) It's a thought-provoking book. Blackwell visits & describes the places & people there, but leaves you to draw many of your own conclusions. I typically enjoy travel memoirs, and this book is no exception. It brought me to corners of the globe where I've never been (and most likely will never go); I like & respect that Blackwell visit...more

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Jun 25, 2012 Tuck rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: essays, natural-history

a really good idea here, visit very polluted places on earth "as a tourist" but do your research so you can write intelligently about cause and affect and local cultures but also write in the ironical hipsterism style to try and be "funny" while having an overall tone of "wide-eyed american innocence" so that.....what?...you can claim you are just a wide eyed innocent when it comes to actually analyzing the places you visit? cause that's what the author does, he cops out, a bunch.
he visits: Cher...more

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Sep 29, 2012 Deb (Readerbuzz) Nance rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: problems-ideas, travel

How does this sound for a vacation: A fun-filled trip to Chernobyl, the site of one of the world's worst nuclear accidents? Or how about a boat cruise down the Yamuna River, India's most polluted river? Don't leave out possible trips to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch or a visit to the site of the most devastating deforestation in the rainforest near the Amazon?

To Andrew Blackwell, these sounded like delightful trips. He traveled to all of these and more spots noted for being on lists for the Wo...more

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Feb 23, 2013 Stefanie rated it 3 of 5 stars

Andrew Blackwell has an unusual way of seeing the world -- irreverent, quirky, mischievous and challenging -- and he still provides considerable insight. This book captures his global odyssey (the Exclusion Zone around Chernobyl in the Ukraine is but one stop)in which he wishes to chronicle the polluted places in the world -- places humans wish to ignore yet whose existence is entirely due to the throngs of humankind. The chapter on Chernobyl is particularly telling as it reveals humankind's fol...more

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Jun 08, 2012 Tim rated it 5 of 5 stars

"Visit Sunny Chernobyl," or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Polluted Planet

I'm a fan of both adventure travel writing and ecological nonfiction, and Visit Sunny Chernobyl is a solid, highly entertaining instance of both. Blackwell doesn't necessarily claim to be writing either, though -- he's just a tourist who wants to vacation in the world's most polluted places, and has written the missing travel guide for pollution tourism.

It's a brilliant conceit. But what makes the book succe...more

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Oct 04, 2012 Debbie Hall rated it 4 of 5 stars

Interesting premise for a book - what is like to live or visit some of the most polluted places in the world? I must confess I picked this up only because my hometown, Port Arthur, Texas was listed. Although I have been away for over 40 years, I wonder if I carry souvenirs from my petro-chemical crib?

I found the section on the history of Spindletop especially interesting as a family member (way back) supposedly owned the land from which this famous gusher errupted. Also interesting was the back...more

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May 05, 2012 Mason rated it 2 of 5 stars

The title article was excepted in the New Yorker a few months ago. It was a pleasantly written essay and I looked forward to seeing more from Andrew Blackwell. Unfortunately, the rest of the book is not as durable. As a travel journalist, Blackwell does a better job of describing people than environments. Though the people are interesting, I want to know more about the conditions of their worlds. More fundamentally, this narrative is woven with a thread of the authors own life, which distracts f...more

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Dec 06, 2012 Jeff rated it 4 of 5 stars

Visit Sunny Chernobyl by Andrew Blackwell

Andrew Blackwell spent 6 months in India visiting the well known and beautiful sites, but was really taken in by the city Kanpur which was not listed in any of his guidebooks and was called India’s most polluted city. This led him to want to visit some of the worse, instead of the best places in the world such as Chernobyl the site of a nuclear reactor meltdown in the 1980’s to oil fields in Canada and Texas.

I don’t think I would any of these places woul...more

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Mar 03, 2013 Joe rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: best-of-2013

The author is a friend of mine, which is why I kept putting off reading the book I dutifully purchased the day it was published. What if I didn't like it? How awkward would that be?

I'm relieved and proud to say that this book is fantastic. It excels as travel writing, as a compelling story, and it's laugh-out-loud funny. The most important thing about VISIT SUNNY CHERNOBYL, though, is as a insistent reminder that however much you think you know about the environment and pollution, it's much more...more

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Oct 08, 2012 Barbara rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: environment, travel, nonfiction

This book has an odd premise: visiting some of the world’s most polluted places as a tourist. Sort of reverse eco-tourism. Along the way Blackwell meets intriguing people who struggle to find niches for themselves amid their despoiled surroundings, from Russian tour guides to Chinese computer parts recyclers to Brazilian farmers who rotate crops by slashing and burning. The epigraph sums up Blackwell’s findings--“Even what is most unnatural is part of nature”—and he finds beauty in unlikely plac...more

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Aug 26, 2012 Jacqui rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: explore-ideas-for-discussion, non-fiction

Andrew Blackwell visits some of the most polluted places on earth with a tourist's perspective. Well written, engaging, poignant and thought provoking. He does not give a solution to their problems (and it appears from his observations that there is none!!) but merely observes from reading related articles and speaking with the locals. The reader is left to draw his own conclusions. I concluded that Greenpeace was an ineffective and idealogical organisation which does little to help the environm...more

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Mar 17, 2012 Brad rated it 4 of 5 stars

It sounds like a silly idea at first: visiting seven of the most polluted places on the planet and treating them as vacation spots. But from the moment he hits the ground in Chernobyl and as we follow him to Canada, Texas, the Pacific Garbage Patch, Brazil, China, and India, Blackwell is an engaging story teller, combining anecdotes with facts, philosophy, interesting observations about environmentalism and the environment, and his own personal journey.

It's also fascinating to take a guided tour...more

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Aug 03, 2012 Becky Trombley rated it 3 of 5 stars

I was 3/4 of the way through this book when I heard the author being interviewed on satellite radio. I have more appreciation for the book after hearing the interview. Isn't that interesting when that happens? One of my problems was that I wanted MORE information about these places. But, as the author points out, there is just so much we don't know about the lasting effects of things like Chernobyl. Scientists can't even agree on how many people died when Chernobyl blew up-the estimates are wild...more

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Aug 09, 2012 LDL rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: staff-picks

A weird blend of travel book, environmental awareness, and character profiles, this book was funny, disturbing, enjoyable and surprising. Blackwell’s humor keeps it moving along nicely, his adventures trying to experience the most polluted places in the world are interesting as are the locals that he meets. His explanations of the polluted sites and what make them polluted are easy to understand and amusing. My favorite chapters were about Chernobyl (and his so-called radiation poisoning), the G...more

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Mar 31, 2013 Marissa Gauthier rated it 4 of 5 stars

I genuinely really liked this book, but it could have been a lot better. The author's experiences in all of these places around the world were great to read about but they could have been enhanced by more pictures and more detailed maps. It was fun, though, to read this along using Google Earth to track all the different locations- I definitely recommend poking around Chernobyl, the Alberta Oil Sands, and Port Arthur. In Port Arthur- the buildings don't get 3D so you can't see the height of the...more

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Aug 01, 2012 Lydia rated it 4 of 5 stars

I really liked the idea. I got lost in the chapter about India, and I really hoped he would return to his trip up the river in Chernobyl to bring the book together, but overall, I really loved this book. His quirky humor and his insistence on seeing both sides, and making snarky comments about both, and then conceding misperceptions about both sides, really made the book quite funny. My kind of humor. I think I mostly wished he had gone more places. Perhaps his sequel could be "An Encyclopedic A...more

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Feb 12, 2013 Pamela rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: non_fiction, travel

A different type of travel book – the ecotourism of disasters, human made of course. Blackwell puts a lot of humor in his book and it works well most of the time. At first I found him a little too smart-alecky, but I think I got used to it, mostly. There isn’t a lot of depth although on occasion he tries to get philosophical and some of the book is meandering, sauntering. The overarching summation of what this all means is littered throughout in pieces, you have to pick it up yourself. (insert s...more

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May 21, 2013 Robert rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: sociopolitical-issues, environmental

Very entertaining book that encapsulates major environmental issues with humor and the author's Odyssey. HUMOR? What's funny about eco-disasters? Nothing, but his remarks about the polluters and the environmentalists are funny. Each chapter stands as an essay about the hideousness of place, how it got that way and what's being done (or not) to mitigate. An ironic outcome of Chernobyl is the creation of the (de facto)largest wildlife reserve in Europe. Man celebrates(!!!)his ugly creations -oil s...more

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