The World Without Us

This book was not what I thought it was going to be, and I was mightily disappointed.

What did I think it would be? Well, I thought it would look at what would become of the planet Earth if tomorrow the human species simply vanished; basically, what it says on the tin. What the book spends an extraordinary amount of time actually discussing is what existed before humans evolved and what horrible things we have done since then. I fail to see what the Mau Mau Uprising or what killed off the woolly mammoths have to do with this book, and yet there they are, gobbling up space and too much of my time.

I made it a handful of pages past 100, and in that space there were about two chapters in the book that actually talked about what would happen to human-made and natural spaces once humans were gone. That's it, just two! They were fantastic chapters, very informative and easy to read, but the off-topic junk is taking up too much space and I find myself actually angry at the prospect of reading this book.

I got this book on CD from the library because I had watched the History Channel special based on this book and enjoyed it. I expected the book to be similar to the TV program–a look into what the world would be like if humans suddenly disappeared. The book does cover this, but mostly it discusses how humans are currently ruining the planet and that the world would be better off without us. That may be true, but it's depressing to listen to for 12+ hours!

My favorite chapter was the first one, where the narration sweeps in a gods-eye view across a world where human-made artifacts slowly crumble, buildings collapse, pipes leak, asphalt breaks, and where nature reclaims its rightful space. There is something so haunting and breath-taking in this vision of us and our artifacts and our toxic and invasive remnants slowly being erased from the planet. Gladly would have stayed in this detached meditative vision.

But then Weisman gets more practical, we learn from experts how our chemicals, our gardens, our tunnels and radio waves will fare in this thought experiment of a world, where all humanity will suddenly go poof.