The End of the End of the Earth

Essays

By: Jonathan Franzen

Narrated by: Robert Petkoff

From Jonathan Franzen, one of our preeminent writers and thinkers, comes a brilliant, searing essay collection that calls for us to take better care of our planet and one another in these troubled times.

The End of the End of the Earth is a collection of Jonathan Franzen's essays and speeches from the past five years, in which he grapples with the most important and heated ethical subjects of the day: environmentalism, capitalism, wealth inequality, race, technology and the role of art. He challenges us to ask difficult questions: What is our civic responsibility in the face of climate change, the greatest ever threat to our planet and species? Does technology give us a sense of control or community or is it stripping these from us? Above all, in these essays, Franzen asks us to care--about causes great and small, with subjects as big as our planet and specific as a rare species of birds. These essays are in praise of empathy, and of the beauty and power of nature and art.
This slim but powerful book is Franzen at his best, incisive, persuasive and compassionate.

Critic reviews

A Financial Times Book of the Year

"Franzen displays his signature precision and deadpan humor." —Vanity Fair

"Jonathan Franzen's essays offer a different escape from the madness . . . the idea that serious, humane thinking and writing, of the kind that teases out the truth of the world, can still generate enlightenment." —The Guardian (UK)

"Intelligent and insightful. . . . [These are] witty, reflective, opinionated essays from a writer with the ability to 'laugh in dark times.'" —Kirkus Reviews

"Whether observing the eerie beauty of Antarctica ('far from having melted,' he reports) or dispensing 'Ten Rules for the Novelist,' Franzen makes for an entertaining, sometimes prickly, but always quotable companion." —Publishers Weekly

"[Franzen is] as insightful both in his reflections on being a young person in New York as he is in his thoughts on the necessity of birds for our ecosystem's survival." —TIME

"This book is a good place to catch up with the acclaimed novelist . . . whose graceful, trenchant essays are a joy to read even when the subject is terrifying." —Associated Press

"Franzen's essays are witty, shrewd and poetic, full of subtly orchestrated digressions, and eminently quotable." —The Daily Telegraph (UK)

"Though the subject matter of these pieces varies widely, they're united by a belief that, in our fragmented, increasingly absurd world, paying close attention—to the planet, to books, to those we love—is perhaps the most meaningful thing any of us can do." —San Francisco Chronicle

"His avoidance of easy answers has always made Franzen worth reading. . . . Franzen, unlike many, listens. It's what makes him one of the best living writers of fictional dialogue, and it's what makes his arguments productively provocative. Read his latest for the avian rhapsodies and nuanced climate politics, but also because there's more to any good argument than can easily be summarized on social media." —The Washington Post

"The fact remains that Franzen is a hell of a writer." —New York Journal of Books