• The World Without Us

  • By: Alan Weisman
  • Narrated by: Adam Grupper
  • Length: 12 hrs and 4 mins
  • 3.9 out of 5 stars (863 ratings)

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The World Without Us  By  cover art

The World Without Us

By: Alan Weisman
Narrated by: Adam Grupper
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Publisher's summary

In this far-reaching narrative, Weisman explains how our massive infrastructure would collapse and vanish without human presence; which everyday items may become immortalized as fossils; why some of our earliest buildings might be the last architecture left; and how plastic, bronze sculpture, and man-made molecules may be our lasting gifts to the universe.

Just days after humans disappear, floods in New York's subways would start eroding the city's foundations and the world's cities would crumble, asphalt jungles giving way to real ones. Drawing on the expertise of engineers, atmospheric scientists, art conservators, zoologists, oil refiners, marine biologists, astrophysicists, religious leaders from rabbis to the Dalai Lama, and paleontologists, who describe a prehuman world inhabited by megafauna (like giants sloths that stood taller than mammoths), Weisman illustrates what the planet might be like today, if not for us.

Weisman reveals Earth's tremendous capacity for self-healing and shows which human devastations are indelible and what of our highest art and culture would endure longest. Ultimately reaching a radical but persuasive solution to our planet's problems - one that needn't depend on our demise - this is narrative nonfiction at its finest, taking on an irresistible concept with gravity but a highly accessible touch.

©2007 Alan Weisman (P)2007 Audio Renaissance, a division of Holtzbrinck Publishers LLC

Critic reviews

"Weisman's enthralling tour of the world of tomorrow explores what little will remain of ancient times while anticipating, often poetically, what a planet without us would be like." ( Publishers Weekly)

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What listeners say about The World Without Us

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars

mixed feelings

I found this book to be entertaining and thought provoking at times, yet also vague and not focused at others. All considered, the book wasn't the objective science-based vision of the future
that I expected, but more a meandering commentary on environmental injustices since the industrial revolution. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't looking for cheery utopian visions here. I would probably save my download credit if I could go back, and see what my world without it would be like. A good abridgement skillfully edited might change my mind though...

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36 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

A fascinating premise!

Looking for something to stir your imagination and haunt your thoughts? Well, this is the book for you! Well written and well-read, this book provides fertile ground for consideration, awareness and thought beyond the words. Some may find this information to be gloomy--perhaps an indictment of humanity. I found it to be a necessary wake-up call to greater conciousness--the first step to redemption. Great book!

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23 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Couldn't put it down!

If you're a dog lover don't read this. No I take it back--read it and weep. The best thing about this book is it doesn't celebrate the idea of people being gone and the planet "recovering." It laments this possibility. Some people think environmentalists are environmentalists because they hate people. Nothing could be further from the truth. It's for future generations. This book is a sobering, not gleeful, look at what could happen. The movie "I Am Legend" showed visually exactly what this book predicts.

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12 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Old prophecies in modern skin

Reading Alan Weisman "The World Without Us" is a terrific experience. The book contemplates the state of the earth after the human race is gone... The author is not giving us the another catastrophic theory - instead he speculates on how and what can happen to our mother earth if we are no longer there....

The prevailing conclusion is that the nature will manage the world with us much faster we could ever imagine. He gives examples that are so convincing - like the example of Puszcza Bialowieska in Poland - the last forest primeval in Europe, Chernobyl abandoned areas, Korean DMZ - the places where the power of nature prevails - only because we are not there.....

The author also suggests, that what could happen to us, in some sense already happened in the history - in the case of Maya civilisation. Although on a micro scale, what happened to Maya's - can happen to us - on much larger scale.

The book is fascinating and captivating - once you started - you can not stop reading.

It also relates to "end-of-time" predictions of major world religions.

The only criticism I may have - is in the "Coda" where author apparently apotheoses the idea of "one-couple - one child" idea. On this point, I dare to disagree, but I also think, the fantastic book would be much better if we could not identify other agendas.


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11 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars

Bargain Basement Narrator?

The narrator has an inexpressive and nasal voice quality that reminds me of my local TV newscasters.. I was so annoyed by this that I had to abandon the book. As for the book, I think the concept is novel and very interesting, but it is not as nicely written as I had hoped. In fairness, however, I may try to read this in print to see if I can better focus on the author without the distraction of the "studio" narrator.

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11 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

Fascinating and captivating

This book is an absolute must read for anyone who has an interest in science, appreciation for nature, and curiosity of our impact on the world which we share with millions of other creatures. Weisman does a fantastic job of explaining in incredibly captivating detail how the world would regenerate, our structures and creations would meet their eventual demise, and how human development has progressed through the ages to get us to who we are today. This book kept my attention the entire time and has given me a new appreciation for what we've done to this planet and the sadly irreversible effects of our insatiable appetite for plastics. This book isn't one-sided and doesn't neccessarily push a case that we are a plague on the planet, but it does lean more towards that side than the other. Weisman does a good job at covering both sides of the equation.

Love the book and highly reccomend it to just about anyone. It may change your viewpoint of our culture and have you reevaluate the human role in the Earth's ecosystem.

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10 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars

Wrong Title

This is not a good book. Except for the first part this is NOT about a world without us, but about the world with us. The author lists many ecological sins of humans, but not a lot more about the original subject. He is a pessimist, even quotes organizations with implied approval that promote abortion, sodomy and canibalism (sic!) to wipe humans of the earth. Like many pessimists he views himself as a realist and forgets that history has been full of pessimists that have been proven wrong. Every generation has been thinking it was the last. A more appropriate title would have been "Pessimism - a dark view of the future", but that of course would not have sold. Mr. Weisman, just because you are a pessimist, you should not promote your dim views to the next generation.

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10 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars

Generally a good book

As some others have said, a lot of this book is not about the world without us, but the world with us. Still, I think some of that content is necessary in order to point out how we've changed the world in building our civilizations. In some ways, the world could go back to the way it was without us relatively quickly, and in others, we've left a much longer-term mark.

In listing what we've done to the place, there are elements I read in Jarred Diamond's "Collapse".

It was quite thought provoking. Some sections were really fascinating - such as that on what happens to NYC if we vanish, or the oil refining area around Houston, or nuclear power plants.

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9 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars

A Thinly Disguised Diatribe

Perhaps I should have listened to the afterword first. In it, Alan Weisman clearly states that his purpose in writing was to convince humans of just how bad we are for the earth. In the afterword, he seems to advocate a voluntary version of China's "one child per couple" policy, not stopping even to consider that a family with brothers and sisters brings value into the world and into individual lives. Admittedly, the research is thorough, and wide-ranging. Often, in the details, it is fascinating. But a morality of hopelessness pervades. "Surely," Mr. Weisman seems to say, "mankind's greed and lust are inevitable, so we must withdraw into ourselves, stretch out with a cup of (nonproductive for humanity) coffee and a bottle of (nonproductive for humanity) booze in front of our (nonproductive for humanity) big screen HDTV and just die." Inarguably, mankind must radically revise its assumptions about how to live well as stewards of this wonderful planet, but to assume that it's not even worth trying-- that the world would be simply better off without us (or at least without so many children) I found teeth-grindingly depressing.

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8 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars

Deceptive

I am sympathetic to the now obvious real goals of the author. But i find the whole thing a bit deceptive. I thought I'd hear a fascinating book on the science of the title's subject. There is a little bit of this and it is all that gets talked about on talk shows. But most of the book is a constant harangue about just how awful humans are and how much better the world will be without us. Even as someone sympathetic to this view I find the whole thing taxing and not what I bought this book to hear about. The author should be more honest about his preaching. The reader does not help either with his stern horror house voice.

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7 people found this helpful