Frank's review of The World Without Us

The World Without Us
by Alan Weisman

Frank's review

rating:

recommended for: all--and especially our landscape group

status: Read in January, 2008

In the Acknowledgments section at the end of the book, Alan Weisman notes that "As a boy I'd always planned to be a scientist, though I could never figure out what kind, because everything interested me." This far-reaching and multifarious book bears that statement out. At times it seemed unfocused and arbitrarily organized, but I didn't mind very much, because it was usually so fascinating.

The parts of the book I'd heard about had to do with what would happen to our cities if we disappeared--buildings crumbling, streets collapsing, etc. But actually that type of stuff turns out to be a relatively modest percentage of the book's total. Weisman turns his attention to a wide variety of ways that humans have affected this planet throughout history. The book takes us from prehistory (the extinction of North American megafauna, likely caused by the first hominids on this continent, who crossed over the land bridge in the Bering Sea), to buried cities carved out of soft volcan...more In the Acknowledgments section at the end of the book, Alan Weisman notes that "As a boy I'd always planned to be a scientist, though I could never figure out what kind, because everything interested me." This far-reaching and multifarious book bears that statement out. At times it seemed unfocused and arbitrarily organized, but I didn't mind very much, because it was usually so fascinating.

The parts of the book I'd heard about had to do with what would happen to our cities if we disappeared--buildings crumbling, streets collapsing, etc. But actually that type of stuff turns out to be a relatively modest percentage of the book's total. Weisman turns his attention to a wide variety of ways that humans have affected this planet throughout history. The book takes us from prehistory (the extinction of North American megafauna, likely caused by the first hominids on this continent, who crossed over the land bridge in the Bering Sea), to buried cities carved out of soft volcanic rock in Cappadocia, to open-pit diamond minds near the Artctic in Canada, to huge swirling collections of plastic out at sea, to the Panama Canal and the primeval forest in Poland and Belarus, and even out to deep space, where we've sent space probes that will carry communications from humanity (including recordings of Louis Armstrong and Mozart) when all others traces have vanished.

The book provoked in me a strange mix of emotions. On the one hand, it gave me a sort of peace to think about life on Earth regenerated and re-evolving itself in the absence of humanity; even if we destroy ourselves, life will go on. On the other hand, the sections on nuclear power plants and oil refineries suggested environmental destruction so profound that it was hard to feel such peace.

Overall, the book was like a series of well-done Nova episodes on PBS, boggling the mind with a sense of vastness--of geography and time. It really challenges readers to think about what it means to be human and how we can live on our planet without ultimately becoming self-destructive parasites on it.

In the end, the book doesn't offer a whole lot of solutions, nor did I expect it to. It does recommend that we curb population growth by voluntarily having only one child per fertile woman. It doesn't seem likely that humanity will go in this direction, though (I write as a father of three). It's hard to feel too hopeful, but maybe we'll hit some sort of tipping point where humanity realizes we need to change our ways. Maybe this book will help nudge us to that point before it's too late....less

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Frank's review of The World Without Us

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