The World Without Us [Paperback]

The most striking feature is the focus is not on controversial, grand issues like global warming or polution per se. It's everyday things we take for granted that are shocking, like how close subways are to flooding, streets to collapsing; what happens to the world garbage; the pastics that find their ways into living tissues, and so on.

At times, the description is hopeful, such as animals returning to radioactively contaminated land. But at its most hopeful, it is equally sad, perhaps even more so. Like watching someone take their first steps from the hospital after a horrendous car accident that had killed everyone else.

Some of our work on the face of the planet is decades from being swept away by the earth, some polution is hundreds of years from being cleaned. But I was struck speechless by dates that extended into thousands or millions of years. The chapter on plastics as well as nuclear waste is still in my mind. As well as fantastic measures considered to warn future generations or other intelligent life forms after us to what we've put in the earth.

The message for me was: it can and will get better, but it will never be the way it was. Ever.

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"Picture a world from which we [humans] all suddenly vanished. Tomorrow...Leave [everything on the Earth's surface] all in place, but extract [all] the human beings...

How would the rest of nature respond if it were suddenly relieved of the relentless pressures we heap on it and our fellow organisms? How soon would, or could, the climate return to where it was before we fired up all our engines?

How long would it take to recover lost ground and restore Eden to the way it must have gleamed and smelled the day before Adam, or [humans], appeared?

Could nature ever obliterate all our traces? How would it undo our monumental cities and public works, and reduce our myriad plastics and toxic synthetics back to benign, basic elements? ...

And what of our finest creations--our architecture, our art, our many manifestations of spirit? Are any truly timeless, at least enough so to last until the sun expands and roasts our Earth to a cinder?

And even after THAT, might we have left some faint, enduring mark on the universe...of Earthly humanity; some interplanetary sign that once we were here? ...

Is it possible that, instead of heaving a huge biological sigh of relief, the world without us would miss us?"

The above premise and numerous questions are found in the introduction to this fascinating, unique, extremely well-written book by award-winning journalist and author Alan Weisman.

WARNING! This is not a book of fiction but of rational scientific speculation. In fact, the magazine article on which this book is based and expands, was selected for "Best American Science Writing 2006."

Weisman obtains all the answers to the questions posed above by "drawing on the expertise of [such people as] engineers, atmospheric scientists, art conservators, astrophysicists, religious leaders...and paleontologists."

The author goes beyond scientific speculation to observation by taking us to present day, forgotten places where there are no human beings (such as Chernobyl). He makes some enlightening discoveries in these places.

All the chapters are extremely interesting but here are my personal favorites:

(1) The city without us
(2) What falls apart
(3) What lasts
(4) Polymers are forever
(5) The world without farms
(6) The world without war
(7) Hot legacy (deals with things nuclear)
(8) Art beyond us

Finally, throughout there are black & white pictures and illustrations. I found many of these interesting. Note that the cover of this book (displayed above by Amazon) is especially interesting showing a city skyline reflected in the water as the way it possibly was before humans came along.

In conclusion, this is truly a unique book destined, in my opinion, to become a classic!!

(first published 2007; prelude; 4 parts or 19 chapters; coda; main narrative 275 pages; acknowledgments; bibliography; index)

<<Stephen Pletko, London, Ontario, Canada>>

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This is a beautifully-written and thought-provoking book. Weisman takes us all over the globe to explore what would happen to our artifacts -- buildings, cities, farms, nature preserves, etc. -- if all the humans suddenly disappeared somehow. In some places, within a couple hundred years it would be hard to tell we were ever there. In other cases, our footprint will be seen for aeons.

This book is many things: An homage to the resilience of nature; a tribute to some of the brilliant and enduring things built by humans; a caution about the irreversible harm we are causing to some parts of the planet; and a plea to protect nature by reducing our impact on it.

I found it hard to put this book down. It covers a wide range of topics, all starting from an intriguing premise ("what if the world had to continue without humans"), and presents ideas and challenges that stayed with me after finishing reading it. I highly recommend it.