-
Under a White Sky
- The Nature of the Future
- Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman
- Length: 6 hrs and 21 mins
- Categories: Science & Engineering, Science
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Buy for $20.99
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
The Sixth Extinction
- An Unnatural History
- By: Elizabeth Kolbert
- Narrated by: Anne Twomey
- Length: 9 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A major audiobook about the future of the world, blending intellectual and natural history and field reporting into a powerful account of the mass extinction unfolding before our eyes. Over the last half a billion years, there have been five mass extinctions, when the diversity of life on Earth suddenly and dramatically contracted. Scientists around the world are currently monitoring the sixth extinction, predicted to be the most devastating extinction event since the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs.
-
-
Lifts you out of the ordinary
- By Regina on 04-28-14
-
How to Avoid a Climate Disaster
- The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need
- By: Bill Gates
- Narrated by: Wil Wheaton, Bill Gates
- Length: 7 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Bill Gates shares what he's learned in more than a decade of studying climate change and investing in innovations to address the problems, and sets out a vision for how the world can build the tools it needs to get to zero greenhouse gas emissions. Bill Gates explains why he cares so deeply about climate change and what makes him optimistic that the world can avoid the most dire effects of the climate crisis. Gates says, "We can work on a local, national, and global level to build the technologies, businesses, and industries to avoid the worst impacts of climate change."
-
-
Be curious, not furious
- By Axel Merk on 02-20-21
By: Bill Gates
-
The New Climate War
- The Fight to Take Back Our Planet
- By: Michael E. Mann
- Narrated by: Tim Campbell
- Length: 9 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A renowned climate scientist shows how fossil fuel companies have waged a 30-year campaign to deflect blame and responsibility and delay action on climate change, and offers a battle plan for how we can save the planet.
-
-
A good overview of the status of Climate Politics
- By Kathleen M. Lee on 02-15-21
By: Michael E. Mann
-
Field Notes from a Catastrophe
- Man, Nature, and Climate Change
- By: Elizabeth Kolbert
- Narrated by: Hope Davis
- Length: 4 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Taking listeners from the melting Alaskan permafrost to storm-torn New Orleans, acclaimed journalist Elizabeth Kolbert approaches this monumental problem from every angle. She interviews researchers and environmentalists, explains the science, draws frightening parallels to lost civilizations, and presents the moving tales of people who are watching their worlds disappear.
-
-
Very well done!
- By Danny J. Lesandrini on 04-21-06
-
The Ministry for the Future
- A Novel
- By: Kim Stanley Robinson
- Narrated by: Jennifer Fitzgerald, Fajer Al-Kaisi, Ramon de Ocampo, and others
- Length: 20 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Ministry for the Future is a masterpiece of the imagination, using fictional eyewitness accounts to tell the story of how climate change will affect us all. Its setting is not a desolate, postapocalyptic world, but a future that is almost upon us - and in which we might just overcome the extraordinary challenges we face.
-
-
Great ideas, uneven narration
- By depthpsychologist on 12-09-20
-
A World on the Wing
- The Global Odyssey of Migratory Birds
- By: Scott Weidensaul
- Narrated by: Mike Lenz
- Length: 13 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the past two decades, our understanding of the navigational and physiological feats that enable birds to cross immense oceans, fly above the highest mountains, or remain in unbroken flight for months at a stretch has exploded. What we've learned of these key migrations is nothing short of extraordinary. This breathtaking work of nature writing also introduces listeners to those scientists, researchers, and bird lovers trying to preserve global migratory patterns in the face of climate change and other environmental challenges.
By: Scott Weidensaul
-
The Sixth Extinction
- An Unnatural History
- By: Elizabeth Kolbert
- Narrated by: Anne Twomey
- Length: 9 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A major audiobook about the future of the world, blending intellectual and natural history and field reporting into a powerful account of the mass extinction unfolding before our eyes. Over the last half a billion years, there have been five mass extinctions, when the diversity of life on Earth suddenly and dramatically contracted. Scientists around the world are currently monitoring the sixth extinction, predicted to be the most devastating extinction event since the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs.
-
-
Lifts you out of the ordinary
- By Regina on 04-28-14
-
How to Avoid a Climate Disaster
- The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need
- By: Bill Gates
- Narrated by: Wil Wheaton, Bill Gates
- Length: 7 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Bill Gates shares what he's learned in more than a decade of studying climate change and investing in innovations to address the problems, and sets out a vision for how the world can build the tools it needs to get to zero greenhouse gas emissions. Bill Gates explains why he cares so deeply about climate change and what makes him optimistic that the world can avoid the most dire effects of the climate crisis. Gates says, "We can work on a local, national, and global level to build the technologies, businesses, and industries to avoid the worst impacts of climate change."
-
-
Be curious, not furious
- By Axel Merk on 02-20-21
By: Bill Gates
-
The New Climate War
- The Fight to Take Back Our Planet
- By: Michael E. Mann
- Narrated by: Tim Campbell
- Length: 9 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A renowned climate scientist shows how fossil fuel companies have waged a 30-year campaign to deflect blame and responsibility and delay action on climate change, and offers a battle plan for how we can save the planet.
-
-
A good overview of the status of Climate Politics
- By Kathleen M. Lee on 02-15-21
By: Michael E. Mann
-
Field Notes from a Catastrophe
- Man, Nature, and Climate Change
- By: Elizabeth Kolbert
- Narrated by: Hope Davis
- Length: 4 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Taking listeners from the melting Alaskan permafrost to storm-torn New Orleans, acclaimed journalist Elizabeth Kolbert approaches this monumental problem from every angle. She interviews researchers and environmentalists, explains the science, draws frightening parallels to lost civilizations, and presents the moving tales of people who are watching their worlds disappear.
-
-
Very well done!
- By Danny J. Lesandrini on 04-21-06
-
The Ministry for the Future
- A Novel
- By: Kim Stanley Robinson
- Narrated by: Jennifer Fitzgerald, Fajer Al-Kaisi, Ramon de Ocampo, and others
- Length: 20 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Ministry for the Future is a masterpiece of the imagination, using fictional eyewitness accounts to tell the story of how climate change will affect us all. Its setting is not a desolate, postapocalyptic world, but a future that is almost upon us - and in which we might just overcome the extraordinary challenges we face.
-
-
Great ideas, uneven narration
- By depthpsychologist on 12-09-20
-
A World on the Wing
- The Global Odyssey of Migratory Birds
- By: Scott Weidensaul
- Narrated by: Mike Lenz
- Length: 13 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the past two decades, our understanding of the navigational and physiological feats that enable birds to cross immense oceans, fly above the highest mountains, or remain in unbroken flight for months at a stretch has exploded. What we've learned of these key migrations is nothing short of extraordinary. This breathtaking work of nature writing also introduces listeners to those scientists, researchers, and bird lovers trying to preserve global migratory patterns in the face of climate change and other environmental challenges.
By: Scott Weidensaul
-
Animal, Vegetable, Junk
- A History of Food, from Sustainable to Suicidal
- By: Mark Bittman
- Narrated by: Mark Bittman
- Length: 12 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From hunting and gathering to GMOs and ultra-processed foods, this expansive tour of human history rewrites the story of our species - and points the way to a better future.
-
-
Wish I had purchased in print
- By T. Jackson on 03-03-21
By: Mark Bittman
-
The Code Breaker
- Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race
- By: Walter Isaacson
- Narrated by: Kathe Mazur, Walter Isaacson
- Length: 16 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The best-selling author of Leonardo da Vinci and Steve Jobs returns with a gripping account of how Nobel Prize winner Jennifer Doudna and her colleagues launched a revolution that will allow us to cure diseases, fend off viruses, and have healthier babies.
-
-
Except for the author, this book is good!
- By Johan on 03-14-21
By: Walter Isaacson
-
Short Circuiting Policy
- Interest Groups and the Battle Over Clean Energy and Climate Policy in the American States
- By: Leah Cardamore Stokes
- Narrated by: Teri Schnaubelt
- Length: 13 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1999, Texas passed a landmark clean energy law, beginning a groundswell of new policies that promised to make the US a world leader in renewable energy. As Leah Stokes shows in Short Circuiting Policy, however, that policy did not lead to momentum in Texas, which failed to implement its solar laws or clean up its electricity system. Examining clean energy laws in Texas, Kansas, Arizona, and Ohio over 30 years Stokes argues that organized combat between advocate and opponent interest groups is central to explaining why states are not on track to address the climate crisis.
-
-
Realpolitik
- By Catherine on 12-30-20
-
This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends
- The Cyberweapons Arms Race
- By: Nicole Perlroth
- Narrated by: Allyson Ryan
- Length: 19 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Zero day: a software bug that allows a hacker to break into your devices and move around undetected. One of the most coveted tools in a spy's arsenal, a zero day has the power to silently spy on your iPhone, dismantle the safety controls at a chemical plant, alter an election and shut down the electric grid (just ask Ukraine). For decades, under cover of classification levels and non-disclosure agreements, the United States government became the world’s dominant hoarder of zero days.
-
-
Decent story, cringeworthy narration and editing
- By since1968 on 02-13-21
By: Nicole Perlroth
-
Klara and the Sun
- A Novel
- By: Kazuo Ishiguro
- Narrated by: Sura Siu
- Length: 10 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Klara and the Sun, the first novel by Kazuo Ishiguro since he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, tells the story of Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, who, from her place in the store, watches carefully the behavior of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass on the street outside. She remains hopeful that a customer will soon choose her.
-
-
Well Worth Having Waited For!
- By otherdeb on 03-04-21
By: Kazuo Ishiguro
-
The Sum of Us
- What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together
- By: Heather McGhee
- Narrated by: Heather McGhee
- Length: 11 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Heather McGhee’s specialty is the American economy - and the mystery of why it so often fails the American public. From the financial crisis to rising student debt to collapsing public infrastructure, she found a common root problem: racism. But not just in the most obvious indignities for people of color. Racism has costs for White people, too. It is the common denominator of our most vexing public problems, the core dysfunction of our democracy and constitutive of the spiritual and moral crises that grip us all. But how did this happen? And is there a way out?
-
-
Good book but Recording tech is poor. Glitches
- By Jeannepup on 02-25-21
By: Heather McGhee
-
Kill Switch
- The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy
- By: Adam Jentleson
- Narrated by: P.J. Ochlan
- Length: 9 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Every major decision governing our diverse, majority-female, and increasingly liberal country bears the stamp of the US Senate, yet the Senate allows an almost exclusively White, predominantly male, and radically conservative minority of the American electorate to impose its will on the rest of us. How did we get to this point? In Kill Switch, Adam Jentleson argues that shifting demographics alone cannot explain how Mitch McConnell harnessed the Senate and turned it into a powerful weapon of minority rule.
-
-
Narration was defective and robotic
- By Glennon Harrison on 02-19-21
By: Adam Jentleson
-
Fundamentals
- Ten Keys to Reality
- By: Frank Wilczek
- Narrated by: Sean Patrick Hopkins, Frank Wilczek
- Length: 7 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One of our great contemporary scientists reveals the 10 profound insights that illuminate what everyone should know about the physical world.
-
-
Precious knowledge explained well
- By Lee Ward on 01-13-21
By: Frank Wilczek
-
Life's Edge
- The Search for What It Means to Be Alive
- By: Carl Zimmer
- Narrated by: Joe Ochman
- Length: 9 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Carl Zimmer investigates one of the biggest questions of all: What is life? The answer seems obvious until you try to seriously answer it. Is the apple sitting on your kitchen counter alive, or is only the apple tree it came from deserving of the word? If we can’t answer that question here on Erth, how will we know when and if we discover alien life on other worlds? The question hangs over some of society’s most charged conflicts - whether a fertilized egg is a living person, for example, and when we ought to declare a person legally dead.
-
-
Best popular science writing of 2021
- By Dennis on 03-20-21
By: Carl Zimmer
-
A Swim in a Pond in the Rain
- In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life
- By: George Saunders
- Narrated by: George Saunders, Phylicia Rashad, Nick Offerman, and others
- Length: 14 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For the last 20 years, George Saunders has been teaching a class on the Russian short story to his MFA students at Syracuse University. In A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, he shares a version of that class with us, offering some of what he and his students have discovered together over the years. Paired with iconic short stories by Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gogol, the seven essays in this book are intended for anyone interested in how fiction works and why it’s more relevant than ever in these turbulent times.
-
-
An innovative and fresh listening experience
- By Scott Garrioch on 01-14-21
By: George Saunders
-
Our Final Warning
- Six Degrees of Climate Emergency
- By: Mark Lynas
- Narrated by: Richard Burnip
- Length: 11 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Mark Lynas delivers a vital account of the future of our earth, and our civilisation, if current rates of global warming persist. And it’s only looking worse. We are living in a climate emergency. But how much worse could it get? Will civilisation collapse? Are we already past the point of no return? What kind of future can our children expect? Rigorously cataloguing the very latest climate science, Mark Lynas explores the course we have set for Earth over the next century and beyond.
-
-
One of the best
- By Stephen on 08-15-20
By: Mark Lynas
-
Fulfillment
- Winning and Losing in One-Click America
- By: Alec MacGillis
- Narrated by: Danny Gavigan
- Length: 12 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Alec MacGillis’ Fulfillment is not another inside account or exposé of our most conspicuously dominant company. Rather, it is a literary investigation of the America that falls within that company’s growing shadow. As MacGillis shows, Amazon’s sprawling network of delivery hubs, data centers, and corporate campuses epitomizes a land where winner and loser cities and regions are drifting steadily apart, the civic fabric is unraveling, and work has become increasingly rudimentary and isolated.
-
-
Excellent information. Fast reading. Too fast?
- By ameenah on 04-02-21
By: Alec MacGillis
Publisher's Summary
The New York Times best-selling author of The Sixth Extinction and Field Notes from a Catastrophe returns to humanity’s transformative impact on the environment in Under a White Sky.
That man should have dominion “over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth” is a prophecy that has hardened into fact. So pervasive are human impacts on the planet that it’s said we live in a new geological epoch: the Anthropocene.
The question we now face is: Can we change nature, this time in order to save it? Elizabeth Kolbert, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sixth Extinction, takes a hard look at the new world we are creating. Along the way, she meets scientists who are trying to preserve the world’s rarest fish, which lives in a single, tiny pool in the middle of the Mojave; engineers who are turning carbon emissions to stone in Iceland; Australian researchers who are trying to develop a “super coral” that can survive on a hotter globe; and physicists who are contemplating shooting tiny diamonds into the stratosphere to cool the earth.
One way to look at human civilization, says Kolbert, is as a 10,000-year exercise in defying nature. In The Sixth Extinction, she explored the ways in which our capacity for destruction has reshaped the natural world. Now she examines how the very sorts of interventions that have imperiled our planet are increasingly seen as the only hope for its salvation. By turns inspiring, terrifying, and darkly comic, Under a White Sky is an utterly original examination of the challenges we face.
More from the same
What listeners say about Under a White Sky
Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Allen Moody
- 02-28-21
Feel Sorry For Your Grandchildren
Ms. Kolbert provides a well thought out analysis and review of the past, current and future realities. And the future outlook for humanity and life in general in the next 100 years does not looks good. Now would be a good time to buy land in Alaska for your descendants to move to in 50 to 100 years from now.
3 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Anonymous User
- 02-12-21
Amazing and Heartbreaking
Kolbert is an amazing author. I appreciate her optimism, but more I appreciate her realism in the face of man's destruction of nature.
3 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Forest Eads
- 02-17-21
Lots to think about
Under a White Sky seems to meander in the beginning, but by the end it pulls together the thoughts in a compelling way. When taken in context the information reminds us that the fragile border between humanity existing as it does today and not existing at all was never completely within our control. We have altered our home in irrevocable ways. This book seeds the curiosity of what to do now.
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Xcaretqr
- 04-02-21
Narrative is compelling, the narrator is horrible
Whoever selected the narrator for this book should consider a different career. The grating voice of the narrator made it impossible for me to listen for more than 10-15 minutes each session. I finally gave up halfway into chapter 2.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Constance S. Reed
- 03-18-21
Everyone should read this book
A beautifully written, researched, science and data supported story that must be told so we can all understand the crisis we are in.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Dot Kostriken
- 03-10-21
Not what I expected.
This book is a downer; a recitation of all the dreary facts I already know about our endangered planet. I was referred, I believe, by mistake to THIS book, when it should have been her earlier book, "The Sixth Extinction", which is written in an original style, presenting a way to be startled into realization about our role in destroying the planet Earth.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Anthony G. Held
- 03-06-21
A not so optimistic perspective on our chances of surviving
This book has so much research and information. Overwhelming at times, but constructed in a way that very clearly demonstrates humanity’s capacity to completely screw up anything that attempts to control nature. My outlook on our future has become much more informed by this book
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Carol Calvert
- 03-01-21
Important book!
This was a sobering discussion of our changed and changing climate due to the activities of the most destructive species- Homo sapiens, and how we might reverse the process through bioengineering and other desperate measures. Pretty scary stuff, and no way to know if it will succeed. The narrator was super!