sign in| help
Search advanced search
 
Books
Search:
x dismiss this message

Did you know you can edit this page?

The World Without Us
  • Rated 0 stars
Read The World Without Us

The World Without Us (2007) (edit title/settings)

by Alan Weisman (Author) (edit contributors)

Share this book on:
see page history

Description edit see section history

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... read more

Popular Covers

Loading covers…

Choose your book’s cover

Quotes edit see section history

  • “If it comes to that, at what point would things have gone so far that, for all our vaunted superior intelligence, we're not among the hardy survivors?The truth is, we don't know. Any conjecture gets muddled by our obstinate reluctance to accept that the worst might actually occur.”
  • “Is it possible that, instead of heaving a huge biological sigh of relief, the world without us would miss us?”
  • “Seeing elders with trunks seven feet wide, or walking through stands of the tallest trees here - gigantic Norway spruce, shaggy as Methuselah - should seem as exotic as the Amazon or Antarctica to someone raised among the comparatively puny, second-grwoth woodlands found throughout the Northern Hemisphere. Instead, what's astonishing is how primally familiar it feels. And, on some cellular level, how complete.”
  • “The thought of rural Europe reverting one day to original forest is heartening.”
  • “We don't actually have to shoot songbirds to remove them from the sky. Take away enough of their home or sustenance, and they fall dead on their own.”
  • “A flower, like a human, is two-thirds water. The amount of water a typical floral exporter therefore ships to Europe each year equals the annual needs of a town of 20,000 people.”
  • Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers
  • Nearly 12 percent of the planet’s landmass is cultivated, compared to about 3 percent occupied by towns and cities. When grazing land is included, the amount of Earthly terrain dedicated to human food production is more than one-third of the world’s land surface.
    Highlighted by 12 Kindle customers
  • The matter is more complicated than a killer instinct that never relents until another species is gone. It involves acquisitive instincts that also can’t tell when to stop, until something we never intended to harm is fatally deprived of something it needs. We don’t actually have to shoot songbirds to remove them from the sky. Take away enough of their home or sustenance, and they fall dead on their own.
    Highlighted by 11 Kindle customers
  • maintaining biodiversity is less important than maintaining a functioning ecosystem. What matters is that soil is protected, that water gets cleaned, that trees filter the air, that a canopy regenerates new seedlings to keep nutrients from draining away into the Bronx River.”
    Highlighted by 10 Kindle customers
  • The problem is, by tapping the Carboniferous Formation and spewing it up into the sky, we’ve become a volcano that hasn’t stopped erupting since the 1700s.
    Highlighted by 10 Kindle customers
  • A flower, like a human, is two-thirds water. The amount of water a typical floral exporter therefore ships to Europe each year equals the annual needs of a town of 20,000 people.
    Highlighted by 9 Kindle customers
  • The bulk of what’s in landfills, he says, is construction debris and paper products. Newspapers, he claims, again belying a common assumption, don’t biodegrade when buried away from air and water. “That’s why we have 3,000-year-old papyrus scrolls from Egypt. We pull perfectly readable newspapers out of landfills from the 1930s. They’ll be down there for 10,000 years.”
    Highlighted by 8 Kindle customers
  • From this place, humans radiated across continents and around a planet. Eventually, coming full circle, we returned, so estranged from our origins that we enslaved blood cousins who stayed behind to maintain our birthright.
    Highlighted by 7 Kindle customers
  • Puszcza, an old Polish word, means “forest primeval.” Straddling the border between Poland and Belarus, the half-million acres of the Białowieża Puszcza contain Europe’s last remaining fragment of old-growth, lowland wilderness.
    Highlighted by 7 Kindle customers
  • Paul Martin’s premise that humans perpetrated the extinctions that killed off three-fourths of America’s late Pleistocene megafauna, a menagerie far richer than Africa’s today.
    Highlighted by 6 Kindle customers
  • Newer isn’t necessarily better. Wernher Von Braun, the German scientist who developed the U.S. space program, used to tell a story about Colonel John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth. “Seconds before lift-off, with Glenn strapped into that rocket we built for him and man’s best efforts all focused on that moment, you know what he said to himself? ‘Oh, my God! I’m sitting on a pile of low bids!’”
    Highlighted by 4 Kindle customers
Show all 16 quotes from this book

First Sentence edit see section history

One June morning in 2004, Ana Maria Santi sat against a post beneath a large palm-thatched canopy, frowning as she watched a gathering of her people in Mazaraka, their hamlet on the Rio Conambu, an Ecuadorian tributary of the upper Amazon.

Table of Contents edit see section history

Prelude: A Monkey Koan

Part I
1. A Lingering Scent of Eden
2. Unbuilding Our Home
3. The City Without Us
4. The World Just Before Us
5. The Lost Menagerie
6. The African Paradox

Part II
7. What Falls Apart
8. What Lasts
9. Polymers Are Forever
10. The Petro Patch
11. The World Without Farms

Part III
12. The Fate of Ancient and Modern Wonders of the World
13. The World Without War
14. Wings Without Us
15. Hot Legacy
16. Our Geologic Record

Part IV
17. Where Do We Go from Here?
18. Art Beyond Us
19. The Sea Cradle

Coda: Our Earth, Our Souls

Acknowledgments

Select Bibliography

Index

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

  1. Alan Weisman (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Original Language: English
Publisher: New York
Country: USA
Publication Date: 2007
ISBN: 0312347294
Page Count: 336

Awards edit see section history

Classification edit see section history

Notes for Parents edit see section history

Reading Level: Adults

Much too technical for young kids or even YA readers.

We’re hiding the errata, movie connections, books that influenced this book, books influenced by this book, books that cite this book and books cited by this book sections. If you would like to add content to them, you must first make them visible.

© 2006-2012 Shelfari | Terms & Conditions | Privacy Policy | Copyright Policy

Close