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The Race to Remake Civilization in Earth's Newest Age
by David Biello
With the historical perspective of The Song of the Dodo and the urgency of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, a brilliant young environmental journalist argues that we must innovate and adapt to save planet Earth.
Civilization is in crisis, facing disasters of our own making on the only planet known to bear life in the vast void of the universe. We have become unwitting gardeners of the Earth, not in control, but setting the conditions under which all of life flourishes - or not. Truly, it's survival of the innovators.
The Unnatural World chronicles a disparate band of unlikely heroes: an effervescent mad scientist who would fertilize the seas; a pigeon obsessive bent on bringing back the extinct; a low-level government functionary in China doing his best to clean up his city, and more. These scientists, billionaires, and ordinary people are all working toward saving the best home humanity is ever likely to have.
What is the threat? It is us. In a time when a species dies out every ten minutes, when summers are getting hotter, winters colder, and oceans higher, some people still deny mankind's effect on the Earth. But all of our impacts on the planet have ushered in what qualifies as a new geologic epoch, thanks to global warming, mass extinction, and such technologies as nuclear weapons or plastics. The Unnatural World examines the world we have created and analyzes the glimmers of hope emerging from the efforts of incredible individuals seeking to change our future. Instead of a world without us, this history of the future shows how to become good gardeners, helping people thrive along with an abundance of plants, animals, all the exuberant profusion of life on Earth - a better world with us. The current era of humans need not be the end of the world - it's just the end of the world as we know it.
"Starred Review. In this well-written, significant book, Biello insists that humans, the world's most successful invasive species, have the ability to engage in planetary protection and human survival, but it will require wisdom, innovation, and restraint." - Kirkus
"Biello presents some interesting anecdotes and introduces some creative individuals, but his conclusion that only "relentless work" will make the world better is underwhelming." - Publishers Weekly
"Fascinating and wide-ranging, The Unnatural World offers an unflinching look at a planet increasingly under human control. Anyone who cares about the future will want to read it." - Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History
"An urgent, elegantly-told story of the Earth that humankind has made and, with effort, might yet save." - Alan Burdick, author of Out of Eden
"Funny, thoughtful, often lyrical, The Unnatural World guides us through the frontiers of environmental innovation, from ecological survey drones to de-extinction, to Mars and back. These are stories of a humanity that is struggling to grow up, take responsibility for the planet that we have made, and be a force for good." - Emma Marris, author of The Rambunctious Garden
"This is the book for our moment, laying out humanity's situation in the Anthropocene very clearly, and all of it infused with Biello's good judgment and his eye for entertaining stories. Reading it is a pleasure as well as an orientation and a guide to action." - Kim Stanley Robinson, author of Aurora, The Years of Rice and Salt, and 2312
"As David Biello shows with real power, we clearly live in a world where humans affect all that we once called 'natural.' He argues this means we need to assume the role of global managers; though I don't completely agree, I think his insights and examples are a necessary part of a vital debate."- Bill McKibben, author Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet
"The Unnatural World is a sensitive, disturbing, and, ultimately, hopeful view of humanity's relentless drive to reshape nature - and the implications for all life on our troubled planet." - Andrew Lawler, author of Why Did the Chicken Cross the World?
This information about The Unnatural World was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
David Biello is an award-winning journalist who has been reporting on the environment and energy since 1999. He is currently an editor at Scientific American, where he has been a contributor since 2005, and he also contributes frequently to the Los Angeles Review of Books, Yale e360, Nautilus, and Aeon. Biello has been a guest on radio shows, such as WNYC's The Takeaway, NHPR's Word of Mouth, and PRI's The World. He hosts the ongoing duPont-Columbia award-winning documentary Beyond the Light Switch for PBS. The Unnatural World is his first book.
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