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The World Without Us

3.78 of 5 stars 3.78 · rating details · 15,539 ratings · 2,298 reviews

A penetrating, page-turning tour of a post-human Earth.

In The World Without Us, Alan Weisman offers an utterly original approach to questions of humanity's impact on the planet:he asks us to envision our Earth without us.

In this far-reaching narrative, Weisman explains how our massive infrastructure would collapse and finally vanish without human presence; which everyday...more A penetrating, page-turning tour of a post-human Earth.

In The World Without Us, Alan Weisman offers an utterly original approach to questions of humanity's impact on the planet: he asks us to envision our Earth without us.

In this far-reaching narrative, Weisman explains how our massive infrastructure would collapse and finally vanish without human presence; which everyday items may become immortalized as fossils; how copper pipes and wiring would be crushed into mere seams of reddish rock; why some of our earliest buildings might be the last architecture left; and how plastic, bronze sculpture, radio waves, and some man-made molecules may be our most lasting gifts to the universe.

The World Without Us reveals how, just days after humans disappear, floods in New York's subways would start eroding the city's foundations, and how, as the world's cities crumble, asphalt jungles would give way to real ones. It describes the distinct ways that organic and chemically treated farms would revert to wild, how billions more birds would flourish, and how cockroaches in unheated cities would perish without us. Drawing on the expertise of engineers, atmospheric scientists, art conservators, zoologists, oil refiners, marine biologists, astrophysicists, religious leaders from rabbis to the Dali Lama, and paleontologists -- who describe a prehuman world inhabited by megafauna like giant sloths that stood taller than mammoths -- Weisman illustrates what the planet might be like today, if not for us.

From places already devoid of humans (a last fragment of primeval European forest; the Korean DMZ; Chernobyl), Weisman reveals Earth's tremendous capacity for self-healing. As he shows which human devastations are indelible, and which examples of our highest art and culture would endure longest, Weisman's narrative ultimately drives toward a radical but persuasive solution that needn't depend on our demise. It is narrative nonfiction at its finest, and in posing an irresistible concept with both gravity and a highly readable touch, it looks deeply at our effects on the planet in a way that no other book has.

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Hardcover, 324 pages

Published July 10th 2007 by Thomas Dunne Books

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Sep 01, 2007 Mike rated it 4 of 5 stars

I began this book, a careful extrapolation of what might happen to the world if humanity up and disappeared, about three weeks ago. I enjoyed it, for many reasons delineated in the positive reviews below and in raves in various press outlets. But a hundred pages in, I got caught up in other things.

I finished it while on the plane rushing Eastward, about three hours after I'd heard that my father had unexpectedly had a heart attack. So forgive this mordant self-indulgence, but I read the book's v...more I began this book, a careful extrapolation of what might happen to the world if humanity up and disappeared, about three weeks ago. I enjoyed it, for many reasons delineated in the positive reviews below and in raves in various press outlets. But a hundred pages in, I got caught up in other things.

I finished it while on the plane rushing Eastward, about three hours after I'd heard that my father had unexpectedly had a heart attack. So forgive this mordant self-indulgence, but I read the book's very concretely-detailed attention to the devastating footprint of our collective human lives on planet Earth while engaged in far more abstract noodlings about what it would mean to be on a world without this person, or that one.

I have this odd fascination with end-of-the-world plots, doomsday scenarios. At age 17 I read Jonathan Schell's _The Fate of the Earth_ and wrote a slew of essays (in high school and college) on the inevitability of human annihilation; I think I lost my faith in any supernatural dimension at the same time I came to a strange faith in human destructiveness. And, of course, I was also 17, 18, 19--at the peak of my self-destructive capacities, uncertain I had a place in the world, or uneasy in the place I'd been allotted through nature and nurture's respective lotteries. Pissed off or plain pissed for many of those years, I saw in the world (like any good adolescent) nothing but echoes of my own self-loathing and fears. Or maybe that's unfair--maybe end of the world scenarios are ways to step outside one's self.

This won't be wrapping up neatly, by the way. I warned you--it's self-indulgent. No neat conclusions about my self, and no carefully-boxed connections of self, book, world. I'm riffing.

I have continued my appreciations, fictional (Stephen King's _The Stand_ just one of many books sating my apocaphilia) and nonfictional (Richards stand out: Rhodes on prions [meat will kill us all!], Preston on Ebola [viruses will bleed us out!]). After I finished this Weisman book, I picked up Jeff Carlson's sci-fi(ish) thriller _Plague Year_, which wasn't great but hit a spot. (Finished it as the plane taxied in to the airport and I headed out to meet my brother and go to the hospital.)

What I remember about all these books is how they prompted social engagement I might not have otherwise attempted. Schell got me politically engaged in anti-war movements, far beyond the scope of anti-nuke talk. As often, I gave the books to my father--whose appreciation for the works varied (he's no apocaphile), but who appreciated in a more subtle way the effort to imagine how bad things are, how bad we've made things, as tools for helping us to imagine how things might be. I think in talking with my Dad about these books, I slowly learned how to escape my self and that sense of my own ending and instead found ways, through the darkest and most pessimistic of scenarios, to keep pushing on my sense of how to be a good human being in the world.

Weisman, he says to anyone who even thinks this rant has much to do with the book anymore, may be corrosive in his accounting for the destructive force of humanity, but this isn't a hopeless book. To imagine the world without us is to seek to find ways to make sense of our selves in the world.

I passed the book on to my dad, and he seems to be really enjoying it. (He found the Carlson pretty dull.) (less)

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Sep 15, 2007 Mateo rated it 5 of 5 stars

Yeah, what you've heard about this book is true: It really is very good, very scary, very depressing--AND it's written entirely in Spurdlish, a language I just made up that consists only of the letter 't'.

If it only enabled fire ants to slowly liquify Dick Cheney, it would be perfect.

Okay, I'm kidding about the Spurdlish, but, yeah, great book. Weisman doesn't just speculate on what happens to your house or the NYC subways or the pyramids once we've all been raptured off to Heaven. (Hint: That...more Yeah, what you've heard about this book is true: It really is very good, very scary, very depressing--AND it's written entirely in Spurdlish, a language I just made up that consists only of the letter 't'.

If it only enabled fire ants to slowly liquify Dick Cheney, it would be perfect.

Okay, I'm kidding about the Spurdlish, but, yeah, great book. Weisman doesn't just speculate on what happens to your house or the NYC subways or the pyramids once we've all been raptured off to Heaven. (Hint: That expensive kitchen remodel you did? Hopefully it's in a color that raptors enjoy.) The book is really about what we're doing to the planet, and how long our nefarious activities will outlast us. The news is both good and bad: nature tends to adapt to just about anything--think wildflowers blooming in Chernobyl--but there are still some future scenarios that are pretty hellish. Yes. More hellish than Boca Raton, Florida. Between the PCBs, the fluorocarbons, the dioxins, the plutonium, the global warming, and those uncounted zillions of plastic microparticles now gutting everything from krill to blue whales, the planet's in for a rough ride for a while, even if aliens appear in the skies tomorrow and suck us up through the galaxy's biggest straw.

Weisman writes quite well and the panoply of places he visits is worth the price of admission: reserves in Kenya, the Korean DMZ, the Panama Canal, the American Southwest, Turkish caves, Pacific atolls, etc., etc. I'm glad someone could write about them before they're swallowed up in Pepsi bottles and plastic bags.

It's tempting, when reading the book, to take the long view of things, that the Earth endures and that if we disappear from our own foolishness, it's no great loss. In fact, it's hard to escape the conclusion that we deserve extinction for all that we're doing. And yet that seems to me to be both simplistic and disingenuous. For all the evil we've done through our greed, our cruelty, and our shortsightedness, we have produced some real marvels, whether it's the Parthenon or a newborn child. We are a remarkable species, perhaps unreplaceable, and it will be a loss to the biosphere when we go. Of course, in the end all things must pass, as some Liverpool philosopher once put it, but the end is not yet here and there's still much to enjoy. (Do those who wish an end to humanity really believe what they say? Who amongst them is willing to commit suicide for the sake of a better planet?) Let's hope that we gain the wisdom to enjoy it all, and preserve it for a better future.

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Feb 13, 2012 Stephanie rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction, 2010

If you are like me “The World Without Us” will cause you want to do one of two things.

A: Find a remote wilderness and build a cabin. Add a few chickens, goats, cows ect. and live off the land with as much peace of mind you can muster until man destroys the planet. Or

B. Say "AWWW F**K IT", and put all regular, old fashioned light bulbs in all your lamps and turn them on. Leave your house, with the air conditioner running, get in your Hummer, and drive across the country…..just because you can....more

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Nov 28, 2008 Colin Miller rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Fans of nonfiction science

Shelves: nonfiction

In The World Without Us, Alan Weisman attempts to answer the question of what would happen to the earth if, for whatever reason, humans were to completely disappear tomorrow. While it’s a fascinating premise, one that Weisman undoubtedly put a lot of time and effort into, the execution falters. Inevitably, it’s hard to stretch what was initially a short essay into a full book, but that’s how The World Without Us got going. Structurally, the book is broken down into four parts with chapters discu...more In The World Without Us, Alan Weisman attempts to answer the question of what would happen to the earth if, for whatever reason, humans were to completely disappear tomorrow. While it’s a fascinating premise, one that Weisman undoubtedly put a lot of time and effort into, the execution falters. Inevitably, it’s hard to stretch what was initially a short essay into a full book, but that’s how The World Without Us got going. Structurally, the book is broken down into four parts with chapters discussing what would happen to the earth, both in the manmade and in what man has altered in nature, including cities, power plants, nukes, art, farmland, bacteria, animals and creatures of the ocean.

In reading this book it’s clear that Weisman realized that, a) that it’s strange to read a book without any people; and b) in order to predict the future, you must delve into the past. As a result of this, The World Without Us is more about history than the future. Weisman interviews a number of people from all walks of life/viewpoints and there’s a fat bibliography at the end. He strives for accuracy in his predictions, even though it’s based on what we currently know. It’s like when you see a science fiction movie: all the future computers are still based on the technology we have available now. Though Weisman succeeds in not being preachy, the theories he presents are still debatable. There are a few areas I’d argue with him and since time has gone by since publication, recent history is contending to debate with his theories, too. In certain parts though, as with the section on Galveston, TX (hit with a massive hurricane in 1900, then again in 2008, a year after the book was published), Weisman’s assertions remain true.

So what’s the problem then? The World Without Us has a great premise, is well researched and historically accurate (depending on who you ask today), but it’s not all that interesting. It seems like Alan Weisman realized it, too, as the hook chapters to each part are far more interesting than the remainder of each section (save the terse final part which is fairly solid throughout). You get drawn in by a few fascinating chapters, then you have to wade through the meandering text until the next hook spikes interest. I’d find my mind wandering, wishing it were more of dystopian fiction based on environmentalism. Maybe that means I should just stay away from nonfiction science books where inevitably, after enough time has gone by and enough new data has popped up, it’ll be laughed off the shelf. Two stars. Barely.

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Dec 11, 2007 Shannon (Giraffe Days) rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, apocalyptic-or-post-apocalyptic, history, favourite, environmentalism, 2007

This is one of the most amazing books I've ever read. I simply can't get over how fantastic, informative, well-written, and mind-opening it is. Wow, where do I start?

The book revolves around the hypothetical question: What would happen if all humans disappeared tomorrow? Would anything we created survive? Would anything miss us?

The short answer is: very little, not really. It's a blow to our ego perhaps, but true nevertheless. The only creatures who are dependent on us for survival are the minis...more

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Aug 25, 2008 Jennifer (aka EM) rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: all earthlings

Recommended to Jennifer (aka EM) by: Mike

Shelves: read-only-coz-of-gr

An astonishing book, and the first piece of non-fiction that I've read in quite some time that has had the emotional power of a novel. The first comment I'll make has to do with that: Weisman's voice is a powerful one. He knows how to marshall the facts but also how to keep the story moving, and most importantly, get the reader engaged at an emotional as well as intellectual level.

Weisman's research seemed incredibly solid, but the book never felt plodding or laden down with eye-glazing data, a...more

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Dec 18, 2007 Glenn rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: journalism

I came across this book on a jaunt around the web, and, I suspect like most people, thought “what an amazing idea!” The only question I had in hearing about it was whether the writing in the book would live up to its premise.

It does, effortlessly. There is real, unforced poetry in Alan's writing, lines like “Rills lined with yellow asters flow soundlessly across spongy, hummocked meadows, so rain-logged that streams appear to float,” and, in a wonderful description of a famous mountain, he unfur...more I came across this book on a jaunt around the web, and, I suspect like most people, thought “what an amazing idea!” The only question I had in hearing about it was whether the writing in the book would live up to its premise.

It does, effortlessly. There is real, unforced poetry in Alan's writing, lines like “Rills lined with yellow asters flow soundlessly across spongy, hummocked meadows, so rain-logged that streams appear to float,” and, in a wonderful description of a famous mountain, he unfurls the lines “an hour southeast of Nairobi, Kilimanjaro appears, its shrinking snowcap dripping butterscotch under the rising sun.” These evocative, writerly lines contrast beautifully with the “just-the-facts, ma'am” approach of so much of the book--where Alan, having spoken with experts in various fields, lays out simply how events will transpire once we are gone, the full impact of what he lays out before us amplified by being presenting so cleanly, with such clarity..

And he does something remarkable in this book, considering the subject matter. He gives the reader a vivid sense of wonder at the doings of the natural world, a palpable sense of awe at how our little detour on the course of history will be covered and gone, no matter what we wreak upon the planet. Well, not entirely covered....

Because there's also the horror at what we have done. At the poisons we have placed into the environment, seemingly forgetting that we are participants in the very environment we sicken, and at the short-sightedness of so much that goes into what we call “progress.” There are many moments in the book where a reader may need to close the cover, to gather themselves, in order to continue. For me, one of those moments was where the University of Plymouth marine biologist explained what he found while browsing in a pharmacy; for you there will surely be others. The fact is, there is much included in “The World Without Us” that goes far toward explaining how discussion provoked by this book will surely feel like it is concerning an eventuality not quite as far away as might feel comfortable.

This book asks, over and over again, literally and philosophically, what will we leave behind? When it no longer matters what happens to us because of extinction, what will endure? Alan quotes Doug Irwin, who says “Humans are going extinct eventually…but life will continue…I figure it's interesting to be here now; I'm not going to get all upset about it.” And perhaps in Irwin's matter of fact acceptance of simply “being here now” lies some salvation. Perhaps we, as a species, could recognize our fleeting time on this earth, and cherish both that short time and the place, and each, in our own small way, make the place one worth living in, and our effect on it worth celebrating beyond our stay.(less)

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Jul 07, 2008 Osho rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2008, around-the-world

Weisman's enjoyable and hard-to classify thought experiment takes as its starting point the question, what would happen to the world if all humans were to disappear suddenly, simultaneously, and not cataclysmically? Weisman attempts to answer this from many perspectives in relation to architecture, nuclear waste, animal life, and global warming, to name a few. He musters support from a variety of fields and includes both data and interviews in his exploration. The intent of the fantasy, of cours...more

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Jan 26, 2011 Becky rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Pretty much everyone on earth.

Shelves: non-fiction, audiobook, 2011, apocalyptic-types, highly-recommended, reviewed, challenge-1010

This book has been on my wishlist for quite a while, so when I was able to get the audio edition, I didn't hesitate to dive right in. I will say that this is not the best audiobook I've ever heard. The reader, Adam Grupper, was a bit stiff at times, but that's really my only complaint.

I think that this is one that I will have to read again myself at some point, because I feel like it's one that I would need to really take my time with, and absorb. This was so fascinating to me, and too often I...more This book has been on my wishlist for quite a while, so when I was able to get the audio edition, I didn't hesitate to dive right in. I will say that this is not the best audiobook I've ever heard. The reader, Adam Grupper, was a bit stiff at times, but that's really my only complaint.

I think that this is one that I will have to read again myself at some point, because I feel like it's one that I would need to really take my time with, and absorb. This was so fascinating to me, and too often I would find myself getting caught up in imagining for myself what a scene of desolation or regrowth or whatever would look like, or pondering a point or thought, that I would miss some of what would come next and have to back up the audio and listen again.

This book kind of had me all over the map emotionwise. I kind of already think that people are jerks, and this book did nothing to dispel that notion. In fact, it illustrated ways that we're jerks that I'd never even thought of before. Like the fact that we produce plastic exfoliants: miniscule little plastic particles in soaps or bodywashes that scrub us for about 2.3 seconds and then get whisked down the drain to eventually end up in the belly of a fish who mistook them for another fish's eggs. Plastic particles that don't break down for thousands of years... And that's just one example.

Hunting is another. Now, I know all about hunting for food and population control. Food, fine, but I do have a problem with hunting for population control because we continue to encroach on land that was once the habitat of animals, and then when they have nowhere to go, when they are in our gardens trying to find food to survive, then there are too many, then they have to be thinned out. And hunting for sport or profit is a different matter entirely and honestly just makes me sick and angry and makes me want to hit things. OK people. It makes me want to hit people. With my car. Twice.

...Three times.

Anyway. Parts of this book were just so mind-blowing to me that I feel ashamed of humanity. The Global Warming debate aside, we have done so much harm to this planet it's insane, and it will likely never be the same again. Maybe that's the way of things, I mean the Earth is continually evolving and changing, but somehow I just can't see the amount of radioactive waste that we will be leaving, stuff that will last for millions of years, as in any way good or normal. I just could not wrap my mind around the staggering time that some of these substances will be around. And Weisman usually talked in terms of the half-life of the substance, which is the period of time it takes for a substance undergoing decay to decrease by half. HALF. Millions and millions of years to decrease by HALF. And the average human lifespan is about 70 years.

Just the thought of the ways that what we leave behind will affect whatever is left after we're gone is heartbreaking, and I'm immensely glad that I will not be around to see it. I sincerely hope that people read this book, and think about it. We have an obligation to future generations to leave them an inhabitable world, and we're going well out of our way to do just the opposite. I'm not a religious person. I don't know if there is anything out there, but I can't help but wonder if any god could possibly forgive causing such lasting damage to the planet and everything that shares it with us... (less)

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Mar 01, 2008 James rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is a good book.

Not a great book, but a good book.

As a humbling, interesting book about Our World and the incompatibility of our Current Society with Ecology, it belongs on your shelf next to Guns, Germs, and Steel, An Inconvenient Truth, and The Omnivore’s Dilemma. And there is plenty to keep your eyes wide open in horror at our existence’s lack of harmony with the environment. Like the frightening petrochemical monstrosity that is Houston, Texas. Yeehaw!!!

This is a subversive book in that...more This is a good book.

Not a great book, but a good book.

As a humbling, interesting book about Our World and the incompatibility of our Current Society with Ecology, it belongs on your shelf next to Guns, Germs, and Steel, An Inconvenient Truth, and The Omnivore’s Dilemma. And there is plenty to keep your eyes wide open in horror at our existence’s lack of harmony with the environment. Like the frightening petrochemical monstrosity that is Houston, Texas. Yeehaw!!!

This is a subversive book in that its thesis is simple, but in that innocent idea to hypothesize what the world would be without human life, Weisman has an intriguing frame for which to explore and assess the magnitude of human’s impact on the planet – an extensive, pervasive presence. Unfortunately, Our Legacy is most likely doomed to be chemicals, metals, genetic tinkering, ecosystem manipulation, farms, cities, industry, nuclear waste, mining, pollution, etc, et al. Interestingly enough, it is the bronze and copper sculptures as well as the radio waves of information that we have beamed into space that will probably be the longest-lasting remnant of our flawed existence.

It is oddly comforting to know that in our absence nature will quickly reclaim our cities, farms, and homes. It is equally alarming to know how much of our byproducts will continue to plague the planet long after our departure.

Weisman is at his worst when he lingers too long describing what would happen to the Panama Canal in our absence (Surprise, it’d stop working, like a lot of things…). He is at his best describing the beautifully, tragically ironic reclamation of the Korean DMZ by endangered fauna.

This book is frustrating when you realize that the only decent thing to do for The Cause would be to go away. It’s not a cause without supporters. The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement and the Church of Euthanasia both have their points. Even our current mode of departure with the expensive mortuary industry leading the way with exotically unnecessary coffins is rife with negative impact on the planet. But don’t bother getting too riled up about environmental destruction because Weisman makes a compelling case for our Doom to be wrought instead by New Technologies.

The creepiest, eeriest, scariest, most resounding part of the book comes when our modern civilization and the pompousness of our overindulged lifestyles is compared to the fall of the Mayan Empire: “Society had evolved too many elites, all demanding exotic baubles…a culture wobbling under the weight of an excess of nobles, all needing quetzal feathers, jade, obsidian, fine chert, custom polychrome, fancy corbelled roofs, and animal furs. Nobility is expensive, nonproductive, and parasitic, siphoning away too much of society’s energy to satisfy its frivolous cravings. Too many heirs wanted thrones, or needed some ritual bloodletting to confirm their stature. So dynastic warfare heightened. As more temples need building, the higher caloric demand on workers requires more food production…Population rises to insure enough food-producers. War itself often increases population – as it did in the Aztec, Incan, and Chinese empires – because rulers require cannon fodder. Stakes rise, trade is disrupted, and population concentrates…There is dwindling investment in long-term crops that maintain diversity. Refugees living behind defensive walls farm only adjacent areas, inviting ecological disaster. Their confidence in leaders who once seemed all knowing, but are obsessed with selfish, short-term goals, declines with the quality of life. People lose faith. Ritual activity ceases. They abandon centers.”

Sound familiar?

Not one to be entirely negative and without Hope, god bless him, Weisman offers compelling data in support of population control and concludes his acknowledgments with, “Without us, Earth will abide and endure; without her, however, we could not even be.”(less)

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Nov 09, 2007 P. rated it 2 of 5 stars

I wanted to like this book, I really did. Not only was it given to me by my new uncle, but it ostensibly dealt with a subject that I have spent some time thinking about (usually during periods of outdoor solitude such as when walking to or from work) -- the decay of human structures and how they might be co-opted by nature if they were abandoned.

Unfortunately, rather than dealing primarily with scientific, archaeological or anthropological observations about the resilience of human architectura...more

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Nov 22, 2007 Sarah rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: not-memorable

I just demoted this book from four-star status to three-star status. I started reading it and then had to give it back to the library before I was done and then I had to get it back to read the last chapter. At the risk of being platitudinous, this book is no fine wine.

The literary world is definitely instep with our current go-green zeitgeist and, as past president of Earlham's Environmental Action Committee and as someone whose economic footprint is minimal, I am quite pleased. That being said...more

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May 07, 2012 brian rated it 3 of 5 stars

the world without us... would be a better place. well, not for the dogs. they'd die out pretty quickly. and since dogs are the greatest things on the planet, it gives one pause. but, no. the badness of all the bad shit we've done outweighs even the goodness of the dogs. the kanamits aren't gonna 'serve us' anytime soon, a virus probably couldn't take everyone out, war certainly won't... so here are two options:

1) we simply stop procreating and peacefully die off, leaving behind a near (not total...more

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Nov 09, 2009 Emily rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2007, magazine-article-as-book

I needed to find a book in the airport bookstore at the beginning of our vacation, because all my own books had been sealed up behind a plastic tarp by the contractors. The pickings were, unsurprisingly, slim, but I found a copy of The World Without Us and decided to give that a try. After all, we were going to Colorado to get away from the city, and perhaps this was simply an extreme version of the same proposition.

The intent of the book is to extrapolate what would happen to the world if human...more I needed to find a book in the airport bookstore at the beginning of our vacation, because all my own books had been sealed up behind a plastic tarp by the contractors. The pickings were, unsurprisingly, slim, but I found a copy of The World Without Us and decided to give that a try. After all, we were going to Colorado to get away from the city, and perhaps this was simply an extreme version of the same proposition.

The intent of the book is to extrapolate what would happen to the world if humans suddenly vanished: what would return to the way it was before we emerged, and what wouldn't, and how long it would take. The author doesn't consider questions of how or why humans would disappear; giving us up for lost, he focuses on the fate of the rest of the world.

The concept is interesting (and the cover design, by the way, excellent) but as I read my attention wandered. The writing style left me cold, approaching every disaster, large or small, with the same tone of muted breathlessness. Parts of the book are dedicated to borderline tedious descriptions of, for example, a house collapsing year by year. Other sections concern Pleistocene megafauna and other more successfully mind-blowing topics, but their relevance is not readily apparent.

As the book goes on, it has an increasing environmental bent. The chapters about petrochemical and nuclear plants are disturbing, because the subtext is that Very Bad Things that could happen even if people were still around. But this brings me back to the original premise of the book, which is that humans disappear suddenly, and everything else stays the same. How would this happen? In the introduction, the author mentions a Homo sapiens-specific virus, or "some misanthropic evil wizard" sterilizing us, or the rapture. These scenarios strike me as exceedingly unlikely, even within the realm of unlikely possibilities. Why not take a talent for writing and research and turn it to examining real problems, rather than writing a fantasy without much imagination?

To give the author credit, the book has a number of high points--interesting set pieces and conversations with experts--but they are not well connected. Most of the interesting points seem able to be covered in a given href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/13/boo..., which makes me think that, like so many works of narrative nonfiction these days, this one may have been better off in its original incarnation as href="http://discovermagazine.com/2005/feb/... magazine article.(less)

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Jun 16, 2008 Marcus rated it 2 of 5 stars Recommends it for: insomniacs

I enjoyed the premise, but the execution was a snoozer. I'm not sure if it was the author's soporific style, or that I was let down by his overly repetitive rundown on floral succession: "asparagus and trumpet vine take hold as dingleberries and snorfle-weed provide shade..." Over and over; it felt like the author was attempting to display the fact that he did thorough investigation with environmental biologists and was flexing his bio street cred, After the first 4 times, the remaining 18 were...more

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Apr 04, 2008 Jesse rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: everyone

I learned of this book from the "fact" rich radio show CoastToCoastAM with George Noorey. Although George's usual guests are crystal rubbing muppets from Xenon this guest actually wrote an interesting book. I have to wonder if the author even knew what radio show he was on.

The book describes the impermanence of humanity's impact on the globe. Long after we are gone their will still be mountains of plastic but even this will be absorbed or degraded into nothingness. Time is the active agent and...more

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Apr 20, 2008 Kelly rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

An intriguing thought experiment of how the earth and life on it continues if humans only suddenly disappeared, and not in some cataclysmic way that wipes out other life on earth. Of course to contemplate the world without us requires an investigation of the world with us--plastics, refineries, nuclear power plants, CO2, subways and skyscrapers, invasive species, pets, etc.

I approached this book with a geologist's perspective of time scale, and our ability to find discrete and obscure clues of t...more An intriguing thought experiment of how the earth and life on it continues if humans only suddenly disappeared, and not in some cataclysmic way that wipes out other life on earth. Of course to contemplate the world without us requires an investigation of the world with us--plastics, refineries, nuclear power plants, CO2, subways and skyscrapers, invasive species, pets, etc.

I approached this book with a geologist's perspective of time scale, and our ability to find discrete and obscure clues of the physical and biological past and then describe the travels of continents or the family life of dinosaurs. Weisman describes both the transient and indelible impacts of our species' presence on this planet (and in the larger universe as broadcast TV signals of I Love Lucy race away from our planet). I am less optimistic than Weisman that signs of human existence will be so quickly erased.

The resiliency of life--in general, not specific--on this planet is well demonstrated in the fossil record and life will doubtless continue regardless of the certain self-destruction--and of all the other species we take with us--that will be the outcome of our current course. Weisman's closing sentiments are similar to--but not as eloquent as--Barry Lopez' in Arctic Dreams: that what set us apart from other species is not that we should do something to alter our course but rather that we can.

Weisman: "Worldwide, every four days human population rises by 1 million. Since we can't really grasp such numbers, they'll wax out of control until they crash, as has happened to every other species that got too big for this box. About the only thing that could change that, short of the species-wide sacrifice of voluntary human extinction, is to prove that intelligence really makes us special after all.

The intelligent solution would require the courage and the wisdom to put our knowledge to the test. It would be poignant and distressing in ways, but not fatal."

Lopez: "Because mankind can circumvent evolutionary law, it is incumbent upon him, say evolutionary biologists to develop another law to abide by if he wishes to survive, to not outstrip his food base. He must learn restraint. He must derive some other, wiser way of behaving toward the land. He must be more attentive to the biological imperatives of the system of sun-driven protoplasm upon which he, too, is still dependent. Not because he must, because he lacks inventiveness, but because herein is the accomplishment of the wisdom that for centuries he has aspired to. Having taken on his own destiny, he must now think with critical intelligence about where to defer."
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Sep 29, 2007 Matthew rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Literally, everyone. Even, or perhaps especially, if they're too stupid to get it.

Shelves: essaysjournalism

I had to stop several times in the middle of reading this, to digest the chapters and pick something lighter up temporarily. Its not depressing in the way a sad novel is, but its upsetting in the way it really drives home how much humans have fucked the world up. The sacry thing about the book is that when reading about how humans have dissappeared and nature reclaims her property, I'm not thinking 'how terrible', I'm thinking 'how wonderful'. I've pulled back from the brink of thinking of human...more

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Sep 22, 2007 Shira rated it 1 of 5 stars

Ok, even though this book is a bestseller and many people seem to think it is so great and so deep, I found it to be very repetitive and not necessarily that well-written. I read this for my environmental book group, and probably would not have picked up such a depressing book on my own.

The basic idea is kind of interesting -- how would nature respond if people suddenly disappeared from the earth? Would the damage we caused to the environment be corrected? It's kind of a novel concept and would...more

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Jan 18, 2008 Michael rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: eschatology

A genuine review, at the request of my esteemed colleagues:

First off, I read the whole thing.

Weisman covers all the bases in describing what would happen to the world if we were no longer here. That conceit - humanity vanishing overnight - was my biggest stumbling block. It's a best-case scenario, after a fashion. The Earth's bound to get worse since we're not really going anywhere.

The author goes into considerable detail and the science (to a scientist of a sort) seems solid. I found it all fas...more

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Jan 13, 2008 David rated it 1 of 5 stars Recommends it for: nobody

Shelves: mind-numbingly-boring, read-in-2008

It's located on the 'mind-numbingly-boring' shelf for a reason. Whatever point the author is trying to make certainly doesn't support 300 pages of impenetrable prose. After five false starts I managed to get to page 50 before finally giving up in disgust.

All the people who have made this a best-seller? I don't believe for a moment that they have actually read it. This is not a book to read, though it may be one to impress your friends with by pretending to have read it.

Don't waste your time. Re...more

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Dec 05, 2008 Jack rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: environmentals, consevationists, and anyone with a sense of humor and curiosity

Recommended to Jack by: an instructor

Shelves: jackrecommends

Cats rule and dogs are toast.

After reading an article that Alan Weisman had written for Harpers, “describing how when humans fled Chernobyl, nature rushed in to fill our void,” Discover magazine editor Josie Glausiusz asked Weisman a simple question: “What would happen if humans disappeared everywhere?" Instantly intrigued, Weisman agreed to write an article for Discover that allows us to remove Earth’s dominant species from the planet, then sit back and watch what happens next : “ Watch, and ma...more Cats rule and dogs are toast.

After reading an article that Alan Weisman had written for Harpers, “describing how when humans fled Chernobyl, nature rushed in to fill our void,” Discover magazine editor Josie Glausiusz asked Weisman a simple question: “What would happen if humans disappeared everywhere?" Instantly intrigued, Weisman agreed to write an article for Discover that allows us to remove Earth’s dominant species from the planet, then sit back and watch what happens next : “ Watch, and maybe learn." Weisman’s attempt to write such an article evolved into his book, The World Without Us.

Glausiusz presented Weisman with a perfect gimmick to deliver yet another apocalyptic, environmental conservation tome, this one with a clever twist. To Weisman’s great credit, he takes the challenge seriously and offers a thoughtful, well-researched account of what might be in store for planet Earth if all “humans were raptured off to heaven or to a different galaxy."

Weisman constructs his speculation building an enormous skyscraper full of facts and data. He queries a bevy of biologists, paleontologists and other ‘ologists,’ accompanying them in their research to remote and not so remote locations. The World Without Us could have been merely a dry, lifeless, factual treatise strictly for such ‘ologists,’ and occasionally World briefly settles into such a dry rut. Weisman also practices an irritatingly consistent and persistent predilection to describe these experts in a single sentence: “David Foster, at 50, he looks 10 years younger – fit and lean, the hair across his forehead still dark,” or “Volk is a lanky man with wavy dark hair and eyes that scrunch into crescents when he ponders." Considering their brevity, they are nice descriptions, but then so are those on wanted posters.

For the most part, though, Weisman drafts an intriguing blueprint of planet Earth: past, present and future, and shows how the prints have changed, are changing, and will change thanks to us. He drafts it with often playful humor. “On the day after humans disappear, nature takes over and immediately begins cleaning house – or houses that is. Cleans them right off the face off the Earth,” he suggests, and “planet-wide piles of low bids…will come crashing down."
Weisman employs the journalist’s creed explaining not just what will happen, but how and why and where and when. Of course, there will no longer be any ‘who,’ unless you count plants and animals. Weisman does, however, count them in infinite variety and, with his journalist’s creed, he explains how they might fare: cats will make it, dogs won’t, for instance. Unlike their all-too-domesticated household counterpart the dog, “a wily population of feral house cats…that trained us to feed and harbor them, disdaining our hapless appeals to come when we call,” and having retained their hunting instincts, will do well feeding on starlings, rats and other small prey. And we needn’t worry about mosquitoes, Weisman explains, there will be plenty of animal and avian blood to suck; plus we “can rest assured that one of their favorite man-made nurseries will be intact for, at minimum, another century…scrapped rubber tires." He doesn’t just suggest they will be around; he explains exactly how and why mosquito eggs will still be hatching in tires long after most skyscrapers crumble to the ground.

To lend historical support to his speculations, Weisman bounces back and forth in time. He explains how our planet has handled its problems in the past, immense problems like ice ages and giant asteroids smashing into Mexico. He reminds that countless species faced extinction long before we evolved. Weisman and his bevy of experts assert that once mankind evolved and settled in, we became our planet’s most immense problem – that we are our planet’s next great natural disaster.

The author chronicles the damage humans have wrought and the danger we pose for a future without us, including such ticking time bombs as Houston’s massive refineries and pipelines, persistent pesticides and other chemicals, stacks of nuclear reactors, weapons and waste laying around, and of course, our carbon-filled sky. He warns that Earth may take thousands of years to recover from man, if it ever fully recovers. And he details what evidence of man’s presence may still be around for some alien visitor to view 100,000 years from now, evidence such as Mount Rushmore and plastics.

The World Without Us unsurprisingly paints a scary and foreboding portrait of the future. Yet this colorful portrait does surprise with its hopeful outlook of how Earth has always abided and adapted. Weisman allows Smithsonian’s Doug Irwin to draw an illustration using the evolution of the turtle: If a scientist a million years ago had predicted the eventual evolution of such a bizarre species, “he’d have been laughed out of town. The only real prediction you can make is that life will go on. And that it will be interesting." The same can be said for Weisman’s book.
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Jan 21, 2008 Kerri rated it 4 of 5 stars

Weisman's fascinating thought experiment takes readers from earth's deepest past into the farthest future imaginable. I was particularly interested in his research on population growth and the ability of nature to bounce back after not only the elimination of humans, but a reduction in worldwide human population. You will be surprised by just how resilient nature can be. A great read for the environmentally minded and for anyone who can put ego aside and envision a world without us.

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Jul 11, 2011 Simon rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Imagining that all humans on earth suddenly disappeared, Alan Weisman asks whether the world would miss us, how it would change in our absence, and what mankind’s legacy might be. In answering these questions Weisman offers an impressive and incredibly broad ranging discussion, from ecology, natural history and evolution, through engineering, climate science and nuclear technology. Unsurprisingly, much of the discussion focuses on the depressingly large number of ways in which we have poisoned t...more Imagining that all humans on earth suddenly disappeared, Alan Weisman asks whether the world would miss us, how it would change in our absence, and what mankind’s legacy might be. In answering these questions Weisman offers an impressive and incredibly broad ranging discussion, from ecology, natural history and evolution, through engineering, climate science and nuclear technology. Unsurprisingly, much of the discussion focuses on the depressingly large number of ways in which we have poisoned the planet, from global warming on a grand scale to the tiny polyethylene beads found in ‘exfoliating’ beauty products that are too small to be filtered out in water treatment plants, that won’t biodegrade for centuries and that end up inside sea creatures. (I’d be impressed if anybody can think of a more egregious example of humanity’s vanity and carelessness than those beads. Check your bathroom shelves). Fortunately it would seem that there’s a fair chance that the natural world will recover if we all disappear tomorrow but contrary to popular belief it won’t be the cockroaches that will inherit the earth. Cockroaches have adapted to live on our filth, and when we go, they go.

As for mankind’s most enduring legacy, we have to look into space. The engraved, gold plated disks that were placed on the two Voyager space probes in 1977, containing a potted summary of human biology and civilisation, should last for at least a billion years and both probes have now left our solar system and entered deep space. However, it turns out that it’s radio waves that will be our near-permanent legacy. Long after our own sun has exhausted its nuclear fuel, long after the Voyager probes have been eroded into nothing by interstellar dust, traces of all our radio and TV broadcasts will still be seeping through the cosmos. Can you imagine? Robbie Savage presenting ‘606’ beaming on and on until the end of time. I hope the aliens don’t think we were all like that.
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Jan 01, 2009 Patrick Gibson rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: truth_sort-of, lasciate-ogne-speranza-voi-ch-intra

Some people reviewed this book like they were expecting a disaster movie—almost disappointed there weren’t horrific scenes to titillate the prurient side of us all. Not this book—although I felt a little voyeuristic on some of the moments of decay brilliantly described on this book.
I am a ruins junkie. I admit it. Even before I moved west where ruins of past cultures abound at every turn, I was fascinated by abandoned barns, houses, factories—you name it. If it had been left to decay away, I was...more Some people reviewed this book like they were expecting a disaster movie—almost disappointed there weren’t horrific scenes to titillate the prurient side of us all. Not this book—although I felt a little voyeuristic on some of the moments of decay brilliantly described on this book.
I am a ruins junkie. I admit it. Even before I moved west where ruins of past cultures abound at every turn, I was fascinated by abandoned barns, houses, factories—you name it. If it had been left to decay away, I was out of my car and taking pictures (to the annoyance of whatever friends I could hang on too). If I had known a couple decades ago that I could have majored in ‘rust’ my whole future could have changed. I chose music instead—go figure.
Somewhere, probably the blurbs, The World Without Us is described as a ‘thought experiment.’ That’s wonderful—because that’s exactly what it is. The premise of humans going away has been done on both the National Geographic and the History Channel (History Channel being the better of the two), but it is best to read about it. In wonderful detail, Alan Weisman takes on everything you have wondered about (well at least I have). His detailing on how skyscrapers will eventually collapse is fascinating. It’s not all wind and rain. Critters and plants take part—and who would have thought bird poop could be so devastating?
There are a few essay lectures on some of the past cultures that have withered, but not written in prophetic tones. That’s not what this is about. If humans were to go away instantly, what would happen to the planet?
I was surprised that plastic would go away quickly. We are constantly being told that it will last forever. It won’t. One of the most interesting chapters chronicles the minute detail that would bring about collapse of the Brooklyn Bridge if all maintenance were to cease. Again, it’s not wind and rain.
What is the one manmade object that will last the longest? I figured it would be the pyramids because they already have a track record. Nope. I am not giving anything away—it’s not like this is a murder mystery—Mount Rushmore (more so than other images carved in rock because this one is in Granite, others are in softer stone).
The first time I went to The Forum I couldn’t understand why the ruins were so far below the modern city. Where did all the derris that filled in come from? Fear not. It is all explained. On the next tour I take to Chaco Canyon I will be slightly more literate in explaining why some of the ruins look the way they do.
My hard drive is filled with pictures of abandoned houses with peeling wallpaper, soggy floors, shattered plaster, gaping ceiling holes and beams looking like pick up sticks. Can you tell this book was written for me? Well . . . you’ll like it too. Trust me—it’s not boring. Just the opposite: the author makes oxidation, decay, purification and disintegration interesting.
Some cats are born great, some achieve greatness, and some cats have greatness thrust upon them.
In a future without us? Cats rule. Dogs go bye-bye (sort of). Did I mention gravity? It’s a bitch as well.
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Jul 30, 2012 Michael rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction, history, social-commentary, nature, environment, ecology, evolution, anthropology

Well written and researched exploration of the premise of how the world would change if humans suddenly disappeared from the earth. This ostensible absurd premise turns out to be a very useful lens to view many important environmental and ecological issues.

Several chapters, such as those on plastics and nuclear waste, are distressing as their impacts are incalculably long lasting. The ones on how fast pockets of biodiversity might spread or how quickly highly stressed areas might recover are re...more

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Feb 13, 2012 Jeniffer Almonte rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: nonfiction, reviewed

Despite a premise that is, obviously, quite depressing "The World Without Us" is one of the most fascinating and charming nonfiction books I have ever read. And, even as it's chock-full of information, the writing is so lively and engaging that it really was hard to put down. Alan Weisman's curiosity and imagination, when combined with his scholarly research, is able to paint a pretty incredible picture of the post-human world. Often he takes the reader to parts of the world that are already goi...more

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Sep 18, 2008 Julianne rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

According to Bill McKibben, “This is one of the grandest thought experiments of our time, a tremendous feat of imaginative reporting,” and I agree with that characterization, minus the hyperbole. In "The World Without Us," Alan Weisman asks us to “picture a world from which we all suddenly vanished. Tomorrow” (4), whether as a result of an unspeakably efficient virus, a religious rapture, or alien kidnapping. The cause really doesn’t matter, because Weisman’s focus isn’t on us: it’s on the earth...more According to Bill McKibben, “This is one of the grandest thought experiments of our time, a tremendous feat of imaginative reporting,” and I agree with that characterization, minus the hyperbole. In "The World Without Us," Alan Weisman asks us to “picture a world from which we all suddenly vanished. Tomorrow” (4), whether as a result of an unspeakably efficient virus, a religious rapture, or alien kidnapping. The cause really doesn’t matter, because Weisman’s focus isn’t on us: it’s on the earth we would leave behind, the earth exactly as it is at this moment. “How would the rest of nature respond if it were suddenly relieved of the relentless pressures we heap on it and our fellow organisms? Could nature ever obliterate all our traces? How would it undo our…cities and public works…our plastics and toxic synthetics…our art, our many manifestations of spirit? (4)” While the book is eerie in spots (especially the description of a lone electrician cannibalizing spare parts in a silent, abandoned high rise hotel in Cyprus two years after civil war descended on the country in 1974), it poses a fair question. After all, how do we know just what our effects on the earth really are without answering what the earth would be like without us?

Understand, Weisman isn’t asking from an attitude of “Oh, the whole planet would just be better off!” In fact, as chapter followed chapter, I was more and more impressed by the various situations human beings could not just abandon without the whole earth paying a huge price. One obvious advantage of us sticking around is our efforts to protect and promote threatened and endangered species. Another at least potential upside, is our ability not just to cease the activities that have placed so much stress on our planet but to commence activities that will counteract them—i.e. we have the power now not just to offset our carbon use but to find ways to sink the excess carbon we’ve already spewed into the atmosphere. If we were all to vanish tomorrow, our exhaust-spewing and CFC-emitting and DDT-spraying (still used all over the developing world) would stop, cold-turkey—probably a good thing, yes—but all of the carbon already in the atmosphere would just cycle slowly, slowly through the oceans, through plants, for millions of years before returning to pre-Industrial Revolution levels. Same sort of deal for mercury in the oceans, plastic in landfills, and nuclear waste…

Speaking of which, Weisman actually details what the consequences would be if humans just stepped away from our 441 functioning nuclear power plants, our ICBMs, and temporary nuclear waste storage facilities. “Chernobyl” doesn’t even begin to cover it. Chernobyl’s cesium-137 and strontium-90 have 30-year half-lives (216). Weapons-grade plutonium-239 has a half-life of 24,110 years (202). Uranium-235’s is 704 million years. U-238’s (“depleted” uranium) is 4.5 billion (205). The U.S. just began permanent storage of nuclear waste—in 1999, in New Mexico (206). Most is floating around, stored temporarily in holding tanks and waste processing facilities, and without humans to tend to their preservation and burial (cross your fingers for seismic stability), the earth would experience something on the order of at least 441 Chernobyls. Not to mention elevated levels of hydrogen cyanide, dioxins, furans, lead and chromium and mercury (140) from our countless oil refineries and petrochemical plants, two other enterprises that don’t really allow for a clean hasty exit. Thus, if nothing else, this book exposes the LaHaye/Jenkins "Left Behind" series as the worst kind of pulp fiction it is—more concerned with conservative fundamentalist Christian ideology than with the ultimate fate of God’s creation and created.

Weisman does briefly touch on the religious dimensions of his question in a final chapter, entitled “Coda: Our Earth, Our Souls;” however, he mostly ignores the alternative futures and “end-time” scenarios proposed by various religions since they all focus almost exclusively on humankind’s ultimate destiny and not Earth’s. To Weisman, those destinies are inextricably linked.

Weisman is a journalist, his prose reflects it, and for my part, I enjoyed his “facts first” approach. I believe that a true appreciation for the reality of any situation arises more from a knowledge of specific details than broad themes, and every so often, a particular detail in "Without Us" would leap off the page at me, shock and illuminate. For example, Weisman writes, in relation to the lifespan of plastic, “Would geologists millions of years hence find Barbie doll parts embedded in conglomerates formed in seabed depositions? Would they be intact enough to be pieced together like dinosaur bones? (124)” Ugh. Million-year-old Barbie doll fossils? Equally startling was the factoid that after the Battle of Waterloo, farmers were so desperate for fertilizer that the bones of horses and humans alike were ground down and applied to crops. Call me crazy, but the idea that even prim and proper 19th-century Europeans could be driven to semi-cannibalism did more to drive the fear of ballooning populations into me than any table of human caloric needs or UN Population Projections chart.

However, I find myself dissatisfied with "The World Without Us" on two fronts. The first is that, though Weisman travels from South Korea to Hawaii, researches exhaustively, and interviews a veritable army of experts in his attempts to answer how the world would fare without us, the number of women whose views and projections find their way into his book is precisely zero. One, if you count the protagonist of Weisman’s prelude, “A Monkey Koan,” Ana María Santi, who speaks a patois of Quichua and Zápara in what amounts to an anecdote rather than a consultation, and two, if you count Noonkokwa, a Maasai woman married to a naturalist at an ecotourist lodge in Kenya (whose views ARE quoted in the book), who reportedly desires her family life, including number of children, to conform to the Maasai cultural norm. True, Weisman does cite many women in his acknowledgments, but why are their voices not heard in his book? This is especially disappointing to me, considering how by Weisman’s own admission in the acknowledgments, the original idea for the book came from Josie Glausiusz, an editor at Discover Magazine, and a woman. Don’t get me wrong, I’d rather hear exclusively from men if women of comparable expertise cannot be found, but anyone who contends that not enough women occupy high enough niches in the sciences to be cited at least once in a 275-page book that cites so many experts doesn’t have his/her head glued on straight.

Perhaps I wouldn’t mind this so much (there’s nothing wrong with the substance of the book, after all), except in his “Coda: Our Earth, Our Souls,” Weisman proposes limiting “every human female on Earth capable of bearing children to one” as an “intelligent solution” to the problem of squaring increasing human needs with those of a planet not correspondingly growing (272). This to me is so unintelligent as to deserve the designation ‘wishful thinking,’ if not ‘nonsense.’ For starters, who would decide on this measure? Implement it? Enforce it? I’m sure no one wants to see the forced sterilizations such as those inflicted upon American women in the 1930s repeated all over the globe. Not to mention…I don’t know about you, but I’M not going to be the one to tell AIDS-ravaged Africa that it can’t produce as many children in the next few decades as it wants to; right or wrong, I’m not going there.

However, the strongest argument against such a global one-child policy is embedded within Weisman’s book itself. In a chapter entitled “Where Do We Go From Here?” Weisman explores the merits of the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (VHEMT) as well as the transhumanist/posthuman movement which advocates the jettisoning of our physical bodies in favor of immortal existence in a virtual reality created by software. Such moves would, Weisman agrees, decrease humanity’s earthly impact and ease the sorrow and weariness we feel watching our world slowly degrade. “The vision of a world relieved of our burden, with its flora and fauna blossoming wildly and wonderfully in every direction, is initially seductive. Yet it’s quickly followed by a stab of bereavement over the loss of all the wonder than humans have wrought amid our harm and excess. If that most wondrous of all human creations—a child—is never more to roll and play on the green Earth, then what really would be left of us? What of our spirit might be truly immortal?” (244). In the end, I think it is Weisman’s shared affection for both Earth and humanity, and his refusal to give up on either, that make his book so worth reading.
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Sep 11, 2008 Juushika rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: status-borrowed

What would happen to the world if, sometime in the immediate future, without a catastrophe that damaged the planet, every human on Earth were to disappear? This is the premise of The World Without Us, which explores the effect of man's absence across the the world: the swift disintegration of homes and cities, the long-lasting effects of pollution and plastic, the health and death of flora and fauna. The topic is interesting and eye-opening, but the book leaves something to be desired. The narra...more What would happen to the world if, sometime in the immediate future, without a catastrophe that damaged the planet, every human on Earth were to disappear? This is the premise of The World Without Us, which explores the effect of man's absence across the the world: the swift disintegration of homes and cities, the long-lasting effects of pollution and plastic, the health and death of flora and fauna. The topic is interesting and eye-opening, but the book leaves something to be desired. The narrative lacks structure and the voice is stinted, and while Weisman discusses, in detail, the damage done by man, the premise cripples the usefulness of the book: he does not provide any alternative, any advice on how his readers can change or control their impact on the earth in the likely event that mankind doesn't disappear tomorrow. As a result, this book is a long and painful read, and its grim message, although well worth hearing, is rendered useless by the lack of real-world advice. I don't recommend it.

I found The World Without Us disappointing and depressingbut I don't disagree with Weisman's message. Urban skyscrapers and suburban houses may swiftly crumble without human occupation, but some effects of human habitation on earthextinction, introduced species, pollution, plastics, nuclear wastewill be remain for thousands or millions of years, whether we stay or disappear. Pulling on past events, longterm trends, some theorizing, and a wealth of research, Weisman shows both sides: those which would bounce back, and those which may never be rid of humanity's indelible mark. The hopeful improvements are overwhelmed by the negative lasting impact, especially when Weisman concedes that mankind will probably still be around tomorrow and the the centuries to come. The message is depressing but it is also true, and it serves as grim and brutal wakeup call to the reader: by nature of our very existence, exacerbated by modern life, humans damage the planet that we inhabit.

This message is true, but it is also little more than depressing because Weiman fails to provide any information about what mankind can take to decrease their negative impact on the planet. He provides no information about positive effects, nothing on potential change, no advice local or large. If anything, Weisman makes it seem as if there is nothing we can dothe damage done is too great, and humanity as a whole has no desire to change, so we will continue to harm the planet for as long as we live here. The reader has nothing to take away except for complete hopelessness. As a result, the book is long and slow, depressing to read and difficult to pick back up each time you set it downfactors which are exacerbated by the apparent lack of structure, which leaves the book's many subtopics floating unconnected, and Weisman's stinted writing style, which reads not unlike a newspaper article and makes for tedious style to fill an entire book.

In short, The World Without Us is depressing. It is depressing because it offers unsettling information about the impact that humans have on the planet, information which is true and well worth reading. However, the book fails to be a dire warning with the potential to urge its readers to action; instead, it offers no hope, no action, no real-world application at all. Compounded by mediocre writing, I simply can't recommend this book. The premise is fascinating and the content is meaningful, but in the end this book is simply too difficult to read with too little redeeming content. I don't recommend it.(less)

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Sep 09, 2008 Andrew rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Anyone curious or concerned about life on Earth

Shelves: one-book-per-week-08-09, non-fiction-books-that-i-love

You know how tourists are always complaining about other tourists? They all wish that they, and only they, were allowed to see the natural world unspoiled and uninterrupted. As though the presence of anyone else diminishes their own appreciation of the world, to which they alone have a natural right. Hell, we all do it. “The World Without Us” fills a niche created by this kind of attitude, and it does so extremely well. What would the world be like if humans were to disappear entirely? By defini...more You know how tourists are always complaining about other tourists? They all wish that they, and only they, were allowed to see the natural world unspoiled and uninterrupted. As though the presence of anyone else diminishes their own appreciation of the world, to which they alone have a natural right. Hell, we all do it. “The World Without Us” fills a niche created by this kind of attitude, and it does so extremely well. What would the world be like if humans were to disappear entirely? By definition none of us would be able to visit such a world, but this book gives us a glimpse of what it might look like and what it would be like to be the only tourist in the whole world.

Several chapters of “The World Without Us”, including the first two, read like a reverse maintenance manual. The book wisely opens with a chapter of the impermanence of houses, a subject that any homeowner can easily relate to. It came as little surprise to me that within a few short decades, my house would be little more than crumbled remains and some PVC piping. Weisman then describes how skyscrapers, bridges, dams, and farms would fall apart in the absence of human caretakers. Reading these chapters, I could almost sense the pride of the worker who runs the pumps that keep the New York subway system from flooding.

Weisman is at his best when he is describing the decay and collapse of the most familiar objects in our world, although the book does occasionally feel disjointed. Although we are frequently told how long certain things will last in our absence, you will probably never get a good sense of the progression of decay across human and geological time unless you are keeping track on a spreadsheet. This is because Weisman arranges the book based on similar types of objects (the aforementioned houses, bridges, dams, etc), but never gives us a global time line of what would happen in the years and centuries following the disappearance of humans. There are also no fewer than five times when he describes something, whether it is Bronze Age statues, radio transmissions, or toxic waste dumps, as “one of our longest lasting legacies...” This gets a bit tedious, and if we were shown the forest instead of the trees we might have a better appreciation of the effects of unimaginable timescales. My only other complaint about the writing is that Weisman occasionally lists species of plants and animals without telling us what they are. A typical example: “plants like chickweed and stinging nettle were showing up there, and within 10 years filbert, hawthorn, ash, and oak”. Not that we need a complex discussion of the characteristics of each plant, but it would help to at least know if these are weeds, shrubs, trees, flowers, and so on. Oh well, I guess that's what Wikipedia is for.

“The World Without Us” is much more than idle speculation, especially when dealing with the reemergence of plants and animals. Weisman uses evidence from paleontology and archeology to determine what life was like before humans and then extrapolates this to a future without humans. I found it frustrating that there was no solid evidence about the fate of plastics, petrochemicals, and nuclear waste, although this is hardly the fault of the author. Our lack of knowledge about the decomposition of some materials is an important thing to convey to readers.

Weisman does not come out and say what action he thinks we should take but it seemed clear to me that he is sympathetic to the ideals of the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, a representative of which he interviews. This attitude is a bit tough to swallow for me; as terrible as humans' environmental legacy might be, we are still part of this world and I believe that we can coexist if we all make enough effort. On this topic Weisman is silent; we are given no prescription for what we can do to help remove humanity's destruction from the earth. I found this to be a strength of “The World Without Us”. Environmental activism is a moral and political issue, and avoiding that hornet's nest helps the book feel more objective. This book does an excellent job of treading carefully between many possible pitfalls; it never feels too pessimistic, cynical, fanciful, or hopeful. Hopefully the realistic and straightforward approach will inspire readers to take whatever action they see fit to help minimize our impact on planet Earth, without the need to eliminate the human race.(less)

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About Alan Weisman

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Alan Weisman's reports from around the world have appeared in Harper's, The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, The Los Angeles Times Magazine, Orion, Wilson Quarterly, Vanity Fair, Mother Jones, Discover, Audubon, Condé Nast Traveler, and in many anthologies, in...more

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“Without us, Earth will abide and endure; without her, however, we could not even be.” — 16 people liked it

“in the day after humans disappear, nature takes over and immediately begins cleaning house - our houses.” — 8 people liked it

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