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  The World without Us (Virgin Books) (Paperback) By (author) Alan Weisman

  Book rating: 03

  

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  Short Description for The World without UsLooks to areas of the world that are unoccupied and speaks to experts in fields ranging from nuclear physics to archaeology. This book reveals how the natural world would react to our disappearance and wrestles with some of the key concerns of our time to offer a glimpse of the legacy of our existence on the planet.
  Full description

  • Publisher: Virgin Books
  • Published: 03 April 2008
  • Format: Paperback 336 pages
  • See: Full bibliographic data
  • Categories: Science: General Issues | Popular Science
  • ISBN 13: 9780753513576 ISBN 10: 0753513579
  • Sales rank: 15,673

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Reviews for The World without Us

• Staff review

  The World Without UsBook rating: 3

  

  Not -- as someone quipped -- The World Without the US, Alan Weisman's The World Without Us is actually a slightly terrifying and wholly arresting look at what would happen to the planet if we humans were no longer on it. To read it is to be humbled -- as much damage as we are undoubtedly doing to the planet whilst we are here, once we are gone Gaia will keep on keeping on. Weisman asks, "how would the world change if human beings vanished from the earth right now, for good? What would the planet be like in a day, a week, a month ... a millennium?" His answers make for an utterly absorbing read.

  
  

  When reading The World Without Us, one can't help being reminded of the last words of Michel Foucault's The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences where Foucault writes that mankind may one day "be erased, like a face drawn in sand at the edge of the sea." Weisman takes this thought-experiment, consulting many experts along the way, from nuclear physicists to archeologists, and looks at just what would happen to our planet if we weren't around any longer to mess it up.

  by Mark Thwaite

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