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Sign in with Facebook Sign in options. Join The World Without Us. Want to Read saving…. Want to Read Currently Reading Read. Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Without them, we couldn't exist. It's that simple, and we can't afford to ignore them, anymore than I can afford to neglect my precious wife--nor the sweet mother Earth that births and holds us all. Without us, Earth will abide and endure; without her, however, we could not even be. That may seem far-fetched, but it's also a definition of prayer. Nothing remains the same. Who would ever have imagined that an organism would essentially turn itself inside out, pulling its shoulder girdle inside its ribs to form a carapace? The only real prediction you can make is that life The World Without Us go on. And that it will be interesting. To enter it is to realize that most of us were bred to a pale copy of what nature intended. 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-growth woodlands found throughout The World Without Us Northern Hemisphere. And, on some cellular level, how complete. Since the Milky Way islight-years across and 1, light-years thick, and our solar system is near The World Without Us middle of the galactic plane, this means in about AD the expanding sphere of radio The World Without Us bearing Lucy, Ricky, and their neighbors the Mertzes will emerge from the top and bottom of our galaxy and enter intergalactic The World Without Us. Nor, absent the availability of a few thousand slaves, is it cheap, especially compared to another Roman innovation: concrete. All this plastic had appeared in barely more than 50 years. Would its chemical constituents or additives—for instance, colorants such as metallic copper— concentrate as they ascended the food chain, The World Without Us alter evolution? Would it last long enough to enter the fossil record? Would geologists millions of years hence find Barbie doll parts embedded in conglomerates formed in seabed depositions? Would they be intact enough to be pieced together like dinosaur bones? That is also true if it is sunk in the ocean, covered with sediment. Possibly anaerobic organisms there can biodegrade it. So we expect much-slower degradation at the sea bottom. Many times longer. Even an order of magnitude longer. One thousand years? Ten thousand? The seemingly invincible cockroach, a tropical import, long ago froze in unheated apartment buildings. Without garbage, rats starved or became lunch for the raptors nesting in burnt-out skyscrapers. The material still remains a polymer. Welcome back. Just a moment while we sign you in to your Goodreads account. The World Without Us - Alan Weisman

Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read. Want to Read saving…. Want to Read Currently Reading Read. Other editions. Enlarge cover. Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Open Preview See a Problem? Details if other :. Thanks for telling us about the problem. Return to Book Page. A penetrating, page-turning tour of a post-human Earth In The World Without UsAlan 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 The World Without Us finally vanish without human presence; which everyday A penetrating, page-turning tour of a post-human Earth In The World Without UsAlan 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 The World Without Us how copper pipes and wiring would The World Without Us 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 The World Without Us 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 Dalai Lama, and paleontologists—who describe a prehuman world inhabited by megafauna like giant sloths that stood taller than mammoths—Weisman illustrates what the planet The World Without Us be like today, if not for us. From places already devoid of humans a last fragment of primeval European forest; the Korean DMZ; ChernobylWeisman 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. Get A Copy. HardcoverFirst Editionpages. More Details Original Title. Other Editions Friend Reviews. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about The World Without Usplease sign up. It has been a few years since I've read this, and The World Without Us forgot: does Weisman go at all into the eventual failures that would lead to the collapse of skyscrapers, including the newest ones? Carolyn McBride He covers what leads to some failures, yes. He touches on some failures of certain bridges, but I suppose metal failure is metal failure no matter if …more He covers what leads to some failures, yes. He touches on some failures of certain bridges, but I suppose metal failure is metal failure no matter if it's a bridge or high-rise. Edward This book is pages, not counting index and acknowledgements. See all 6 questions about The World Without Us…. Lists with This Book. Community Reviews. Showing Average rating 3. Rating details. More filters. Sort order. Start your review of The World Without Us. A: Find a remote wilderness and build a cabin. Add a few chickens, goats, cows ect. Leave your The World Without Us, with the The World Without Us conditioner running, get in your Hummer, and drive across the country…. Eat as much factory farmed meat as you can stand on the way…. Steal a truck loaded with nuclear waste and drive it Thelma and Louise style into the Grand Canyon, committing a spectacular environmental suicide. I feel better now. This book is a very good book, but it is a tad, well, depressing. I recommend it because not only do I want to drag you down with me of its important information. We all need to be informed. The World Without Us examines what the earth would be like if man were to just disappear. How long would it take the earth to rid itself of all traces of us? Turns out not very long geologically, but bronze statues and The World Without Us and Ken in the landfill will The World Without Us the test of time. One point the author makes, our problems well most of them could be fixed, or greatly improved, if all women of child bearing age The World Without Us agree to have just one child. That would be a start. View all 34 comments. Sep 14, Mateo rated it it was amazing. Yeah, what you've heard about this book is true: It really is very good, very scary, very depressing--AND it's written entirely in Spurdlish, a language I just made up that consists only of the letter 't'. If it only enabled fire ants to slowly liquify Dick Cheney, it would be perfect. Okay, I'm kidding about the Spurdlish, but, yeah, great book. Weisman doesn't just speculate on what happens to your house or the NYC subways or the pyramids once we've all been raptured off to Heaven. Hint: That Yeah, what you've heard about this book is The World Without Us It really is very good, very scary, very depressing--AND it's written entirely in Spurdlish, a language I just made up that consists only of the letter 't'. Hint: That The World Without Us kitchen remodel you did? Hopefully it's in a color that raptors enjoy. The book is really about what we're doing to the planet, and how long our nefarious activities will outlast us. The news is both good and bad: nature tends to adapt to just about anything--think wildflowers blooming in Chernobyl--but there are still some future scenarios that are pretty hellish. More hellish than Boca Raton, Florida. Between the PCBs, the fluorocarbons, the dioxins, the plutonium, the global warming, and those uncounted zillions of plastic microparticles The World Without Us gutting everything from krill to blue whales, the planet's in for a rough ride for a while, even if aliens appear in the skies tomorrow and suck us up through the galaxy's biggest straw. Weisman writes quite well and the panoply of places he visits is worth the price of admission: reserves in Kenya, the Korean DMZ, the Panama Canal, the American Southwest, Turkish caves, The World Without Us atolls, etc. I'm glad someone could write about them before they're swallowed up in Pepsi bottles and plastic bags. It's tempting, when reading the book, to take the long view of things, that the Earth endures and that if we disappear from our own foolishness, it's no great loss. In fact, it's hard to escape the conclusion that we deserve extinction for all that we're doing. And yet that seems to me to be both simplistic and disingenuous. For all the evil we've done through our greed, our cruelty, and The World Without Us shortsightedness, we have produced some real marvels, whether it's the Parthenon or a newborn child. We are a remarkable species, perhaps unreplaceable, and it will be a loss to the biosphere when we go. Of course, in the end all things must pass, as some Liverpool philosopher once put it, but the end is not yet here and there's still much to enjoy. Do those who wish an end to humanity really believe what they say? Who amongst them is willing to commit suicide for the sake of a better planet? Let's hope that we gain the wisdom to enjoy it all, and preserve it for a better future. View 2 comments. May 07, brian rated it liked it. View all 8 comments. Jan 29, Leonard Gaya rated it really liked it. This is a worldwide documentary book, in the fashion of Jacques Cousteau, or more recently a few BBC programs. The inciting question is a bit strange: what would happen, should the whole of the human race suddenly vanish from the face of the Earth? Of course, even if entire populations could be decimated by war or natural catastrophes, an utter extinction of the human race is a The World Without Us improbable event. Weisman, a journalist and nonfiction writer, investigates different aspects of this question. He starts off pointing out how much human beings since they left their African cradle, have changed their environment. One illustration being the mass animal extinctions, due to human development, that have already taken place since prehistorical times e. These extinctions have been going on, presumably at an ever-increasing pace, up to the present time. But if human beings disappeared, what would happen in the immediate aftermath or in the farthest future? What would become of our houses, our sometimes massive The World Without Us What would become of the unfathomable amount of waste mainly The World Without Us waste that we are continually dumping into the soil and the ocean? What would become of our highly hazardous petrochemical and nuclear facilities? What would become of our most significant achievements to transform the environment? What would become of the climate of our planet, that despite the outrageous and deceitful denial of some politicians in recent times we are contributing to change in radical ways? What will become of our intellectual and artistic legacy? Weisman has travelled the world to find some answers, from New-York to the Panama Canal, from Korea The World Without Us Cyprus and from Houston to the atolls of the Pacific Ocean, and overall his research is well documented albeit easy to read. The World Without Us - Weisman quietly unfolds his sobering cautionary tale, allowing us to conclude what we may about the balancing act that Disaster movies have depicted the State of Liberty poking out from the ground and empty cities overgrown with trees and vines, but what would really happen if, for one reason or another, every single one of us vanished from The World Without Us planet? There are no The World Without Us here—nature goes on. But it is unsettling to observe the processes. Drawing on interviews with architects, biologists, engineers, physicists, wildlife managers, archaeologists, extinction experts and many others willing to conjecture, Weisman shows how underground water would destroy city streets, lightning would set fires, moisture and animals would turn temperate-zone suburbs into forests in years and nuclear plants would The World Without Us and burn or melt. Many of his lessons come from past developments, such as the sudden disappearance of the Maya 1, years ago and the evolution of animals and humans in Africa. Bridges will fall, subways near fault lines in New York and San Francisco will cave in, glaciers will wipe away much of the The World Without Us world and scavengers will clean our human bones within a few months. In Hawaii, lacking predators, cows and pigs will rule. An authoritative, engaging study of plant life, accessible to younger readers as well as adults. A neurobiologist reveals the interconnectedness of the natural world through stories of plant migration. He smoothly balances expansive historical exploration with recent scientific research through stories of how various plant species are capable of migrating to The World Without Us throughout the world by means of air, water, and even via animals. They often continue to thrive in spite of dire obstacles and environments. One example is the response of plants following the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Mancuso also tracks the journeys of several species that might be regarded as invasive. Even without actual photos and maps, it would have been beneficial to readers to include more finely detailed plant and map renderings. Jahren transcends both memoir and science writing in this literary fusion of both genres. Both of these early The World Without Us engrossingly combine in this adroit The World Without Us of a dedication to science. The heroes in this tale are the plants that the author studies, and throughout, she employs her facility with words to engage her readers. We learn much along the way—e. We are each given exactly one chance to be. Each of us is both impossible and inevitable. Every replete tree was first a seed that waited. This is her story, after all, and we are engaged beyond expectation as she relates her struggle in building and running laboratory after laboratory at the universities that have employed her. Already have an account? Log in. Trouble signing in? Retrieve credentials. Sign Up. Nicely textured account of what the Earth would look like if humans disappeared. Weisman quietly unfolds his sobering cautionary tale, allowing us to conclude what we may about the balancing act that nature and humans need to maintain to survive. No Comments Yet. More by Alan Weisman. More About This Book. Page Count: Publisher: Other Press. Review Posted Online: Dec. More by Stefano Mancuso. Kirkus Reviews' Best Books Of New York Times Bestseller. National Book Critics Circle Winner. Page Count: Publisher: Knopf. Review Posted Online: Jan. More by Hope Jahren. Please sign up to continue. Almost there! Reader Writer Industry Professional. Send me weekly book recommendations and inside scoop. Keep me logged in. 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