The World Without Us

Book review by Jane
To begin reading this book, I first had to stand outside of my own pretenses. I was apprehensive on what this book would hold and wasn’t sure I wanted to hear it. Face it, even with global warming, religious end-times, and all the talk we hear about the world ending, this talk is often avoided in polite company. Actually looking at the world without humans can be scary. Fortunately, I didn’t pass it up, but plummeted into the book. This book is not a scaremonger in the traditional sense. It is rather just what the title suggests: a look at what the world would be like if humans stopped existing on this planet. Now, some of what it contains will remind us of what has been done to harm the planet and what it would take to heal the planet. It also looks at what the world was like before we came to the planet. I felt like it was a comprehensive study on what effect we do bring to the planet. If the book were promoting any type of idea on what we can do about the situation our Earth is in, it would be that we could reduce the amount of humans by having fewer children--one child per couple, to be exact. Many people would find this troubling, but I thought it sounded like a good plan for the situation we are in. If that idea turns you off, don’t let it turn you off the book. It doesn’t dwell on this point.

One of the strengths of the book is that the author supports his facts and assumptions with interviews of experts--engineers, scientists, and others. The author must have great interviewing skills, or at least he knows how to get the most of the interviews. In writing about these experts, he brings their human traits to the forefront, personalizes them--and it can be seen that most of them (in fact, all the experts as I remember that were named) care deeply about the Earth.

I thought this book may depress me, but I was wrong. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes to be challenged to think and enjoys science. The book is not only thought provoking, but explicit in its explanation of things that are actually happening in our world now, have happened in the past, and could happen in the future. It is not candy-coated at all, but somehow left me feeling optimistic. To explain that--I am not sure how. I do know more about the world around me now, but there is more to it than that. Possibly, it is the personal feeling of taking the challenge to read this book and look down this path. But the optimism comes from more than that, too. There is more to admire about Earth when considering what it goes through and how it persists and continues to reinvent itself. That also left me with a positive impression.

Jane.