The World Without Us / Allan Weisman / 2007 / 336 pages
Reviewed by Matthew
Imagine a world devoid of human life, our cities empty and open to the elements, the suburbs taken over by our pets now liberated (or cursed) with fending for themselves. Imagine the slow encroaching tide of nature running over, taking back what we left in our wake after the human race makes, “the big check out”. In his latest book, The World Without Us, Allan Weisman looks at the world following our departure. Using an irreverent and compelling style of looking at our present environment and contrasting it with the one we leave behind.
Weisman is not being heavy handed, he doesn’t tell us that we are doomed and it’s only a matter of time before our time runs out. This is a book for both the passionate environmentalists and the skeptical members of the audience. In the first part of he spends time describing some everyday things we don’t normally think about that will last long after were gone as well as some things that won’t be around more than a few weeks. Do you use a body scrub? You know, one of the ones with those little blue exfoliating beads? Well those little monsters are going to be around for millennia. How about your little lap dogs? You’re teacup terrier won’t be around for more than an of couple weeks when Earth returns to a more Hobbsian world.
In the second part of this intellectual exercise Weisman gives us a few examples of real places where the world has moved on. His writings on the war town island of Cypress and Chernobyl in Ukraine are particularly memorable because it gives us a view of what happens when large populated urban environments are abandoned in an instant. The vacant buildings, in the case of Cypress he describes the vacant multi million dollar resort complexes built in the 1980’s stripped bare by the elements and in Chernobyl he shows us that when man is gone something will take its place, no matter how irradiated the land is.
I found this book to be at times chilling, and exhilarating. Weisman’s writing vivid and easy to understand, this is not a challenging book to read and you don’t have to have a background in science to understand the concepts he’s talking about. I would even suggest The World Without Us to high school age readers because of the imaginative event he’s dreamed up. If anything Weisman is a passionate humanist, and he shows it by giving us a view of the earth missing his favorite part, us.
Reviewed by Matthew
Imagine a world devoid of human life, our cities empty and open to the elements, the suburbs taken over by our pets now liberated (or cursed) with fending for themselves. Imagine the slow encroaching tide of nature running over, taking back what we left in our wake after the human race makes, “the big check out”. In his latest book, The World Without Us, Allan Weisman looks at the world following our departure. Using an irreverent and compelling style of looking at our present environment and contrasting it with the one we leave behind.
Weisman is not being heavy handed, he doesn’t tell us that we are doomed and it’s only a matter of time before our time runs out. This is a book for both the passionate environmentalists and the skeptical members of the audience. In the first part of he spends time describing some everyday things we don’t normally think about that will last long after were gone as well as some things that won’t be around more than a few weeks. Do you use a body scrub? You know, one of the ones with those little blue exfoliating beads? Well those little monsters are going to be around for millennia. How about your little lap dogs? You’re teacup terrier won’t be around for more than an of couple weeks when Earth returns to a more Hobbsian world.
In the second part of this intellectual exercise Weisman gives us a few examples of real places where the world has moved on. His writings on the war town island of Cypress and Chernobyl in Ukraine are particularly memorable because it gives us a view of what happens when large populated urban environments are abandoned in an instant. The vacant buildings, in the case of Cypress he describes the vacant multi million dollar resort complexes built in the 1980’s stripped bare by the elements and in Chernobyl he shows us that when man is gone something will take its place, no matter how irradiated the land is.
I found this book to be at times chilling, and exhilarating. Weisman’s writing vivid and easy to understand, this is not a challenging book to read and you don’t have to have a background in science to understand the concepts he’s talking about. I would even suggest The World Without Us to high school age readers because of the imaginative event he’s dreamed up. If anything Weisman is a passionate humanist, and he shows it by giving us a view of the earth missing his favorite part, us.
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