Me and the Biospheres

by John P. Allen

2009 Winner of the Benjamin Franklin Award for Best Biography/Memoir, Me and the Biospheres is the definitive autobiography of John P. Allen, inventor of the largest laboratory for global ecology ever built and one of the most luminous minds of our time. Contained within a magnificently designed air-tight glass-and-steel-framed setting, Biosphere 2 covered three acres of Arizona desert and included models of seven biomes: an ocean with coral reef, marsh, rainforest, savannah, desert, farm and a micro-city. Eight people lived inside this structure for two years (1991-1993) and set world records in human life support while monitoring their impact on the environment and providing crucial data for future manned missions into outer space. Anyone concerned with the current world trajectory will identify with Allen's uplifting account of the most ambitious environmental experiment ever undertaken. Humorous and Whitmanesque, Me and the Biospheres is a tribute to the ingenuity and dauntlessness of the human mind and a passionate call to reawaken to the beauty of our peerless home, Biosphere 1, the Earth.

Genres: Nonfiction

329 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 15, 2009

About the author

John Polk Allen is a systems ecologist and engineer, metallurgist, adventurer and writer. He also publishes novels and poetry as Johnny Dolphin.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_P....

Librarian Note:
There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[Nranger7 · Rating 2 out of 5]

Honestly I only read the first two chapters. Started skimming then gave up. This man is so full of himself I can't stand it. Sad part is I am really interested in what he has to say. He's had some great life experiences and I'd love to read about them! Just not in his haughty egotistical manner. He probably has every right to be so conceited but dial it down a bit!!!! Maybe someday I'll try to pick up this book again and get through it. I live near Biosphere 2 and would love to know more about how it came about. Just can't deal with this guy and his superiority complex.

[Ari · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book recounts the singular life of John Allen, although by the end of the book you'll be convinced that he lived dozens of lives. Allen recounts his travels around the planet - Egypt, Vietnam, Nepal, Tibet, India - and the countless life-changing/enhancing experiences he has, from building concert halls in Texas to running from danger deep in the Vietnam jungles, from Harvard to Sufi sages. Along the way he meets and befriends like-minds such as Buckminster Fuller, William Burroughs, and Ornette Coleman.

The real thrust of this book, however, is not in the story of Allen's life (although it is fascinating) but in the realization of his vision - Biosphere 2. Biosphere 2 is a world under glass in the Arizona desert. Designed to be a self-sustaining environment, this 3 acre structure housed seven biomes - from rain forest to desert, and even a farm and a micro-city. Biosphere 2 was designed to eventually lead to similar structures existing on the moon or other planets. This massive experiment was Allen's dream for over 20 years before it became a reality and 8 people lived inside it for 2 years in the early '90s.

Before reading this book I had only the vaguest ideas of what the words biosphere, ethnosphere and noosphere meant, not to mention passion, invention, and determination. After reading it I am far more informed and inspired to keep learning and even take action as we tackle, as it reads on the book jacket, the "Global Warming Blues."

We're going to need more people like Allen in the future - passionate, unwavering, independent thinkers and philosophers - to get us through the coming years. Read this book if you want to know what it means to really love the planet and people that you owe everything to.

[Douglas Lord · Rating 5 out of 5]

John Allen’s hella fun MatB:AMbtIoB2 is a large, coffee-table friendly tome with beaucoup pictures. It’s hard to believe that the serious, scienc-ey Biosphere 2 (B2) was created by such a wild-ass dude, kind of an Augie March-esque cross between Albert Einstein and William Burroughs. Allen was a Harvard Business School MBA who quit his suit-and-tie job to ship on a freighter to Tangiers. His lifelong life-long quest for excellence in three completely disparate areas - “enterprise, theater, and biospheric geology” came to fruition with B2. Allen’s brilliant, wanderlusting mind spouts some interesting reading; “[w]e post-tribal, post-hunter/gatherer, post-modern humans … have been stuck in a situation of patriarchal family, oligarchic property, and a military-based state with all its accompanying repression, wars, epidemics, devastation and famines.” In one sense, Allen’s diary epitomizes all massively successful American dudes in that he’s an unapologetic, egotistical, megalomaniac. Fifty Cent is full of himself and nuts; so are Tiger Woods, Bruce Willis, Donald Rumsfeld, and Steve Jobs. The list goes on, but few are as charming and genteel as Allen, who seems genuinely interested in everything. Allen’s enthusiasm for his subjects results in a big, fat, beautiful mess (see: Queen Latifah) which nonetheless manages to warmly meld the worlds of artsy scientist, capitalistic bioethicist, and megalomaniac dreamer. I think B2 is pretty much shot, but if the B3 personnel committee is looking for a moody, impatient, talentless hack, I am the ideal candidate.