El Mundo Sin Nosotros
 | By Alan Weisman Debate Editorial, 2007, Paperback Customer Rating: 249 reviews Recommend |
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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.
Title: El Mundo Sin Nosotros
Sales Rank: 187449 in Books
Author: Alan Weisman
Publisher: Debate Editorial, 2007-11-26, Paperback, 427 pages, ISBN: 0739490443
Package Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1.1 inches, 1.55 pounds
- Great concept, long boring delivery
- Great topic, this would have been an excellent 20-30 page paper. It turned instead into a disappointing and wordy 275-page book. While thought-provoking, long sections (second third for example) aren't engaging and it takes serious dedication to keep reading. All the chapters about infrastructure degradation quickly become repetitive and boring.
The book is overall mostly… More reviews
- Thought-provoking facts, but taken with a grain of salt
- One thing that surprises me about this book is some of the comments from other reviewers printed on the back: "This book is the very DNA of hope"--The Globe and Mail or "Extraordinarily foresighted ... beautiful and passionate." While I agree with the foresighted comment (it's a book whose very premise is about the future without us, so if it wasn't foresighted, I don't… More reviews
- errata
- Errata:
Page 94: "Only 6,000 years ago, what is now the world's largest nonpolar desert was green savanna." This change is attributed to: "Our tilted axis straightened not even half a degree, but enough to nudge rain clouds around". No, the larger forcing was the change in the time of perihelion, the time of closest approach… More reviews
- Interesting "What If?" Look at the World
- A very well written and captivating look at Mother Earth's response to the disappearance of humans. I felt the author did a fantastic job at educating the reader on the devastating impact of important human discoveries that we take for granted today. It really will make you think twice about bringing home a plastic bag from the grocery store.
I also… More reviews
- life will find a way - but we should too
- It's an easy speculation to say that without humans, the earth will restore, recleanse, rectify itself. Indeed, in his book The World Without Us, Alan Weisman repeatedly hints to the reader that the world doesn't need us as much as we need it. But Weisman goes beyond the obvious implication and details just how incredibly short-sighted we humans have… More reviews
