-
Under a White Sky
- The Nature of the Future
- Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman
- Length: 6 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged Audiobook
- 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 $14.95
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
-
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
-
When We Cease to Understand the World
- By: Benjamin Labatut, Adrian West - translator
- Narrated by: Adam Barr
- Length: 5 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When We Cease to Understand the World is a book about the complicated links between scientific and mathematical discovery, madness, and destruction. Fritz Haber, Alexander Grothendieck, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger - these are some of the luminaries into whose troubled lives Benjamín Labatut thrusts the listener, showing us how they grappled with the most profound questions of existence.
-
-
A Melange of Dark Genuis
- By Anonymous User on 01-08-22
By: Benjamin Labatut, and others
-
An Elegant Defense
- The Extraordinary New Science of the Immune System: A Tale in Four Lives
- By: Matt Richtel
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 12 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A magnificently reported and soulfully crafted exploration of the human immune system - the key to health and wellness, life and death. An epic, first-of-its-kind audiobook, entwining leading-edge scientific discovery with the intimate stories of four individual lives, by the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist.
-
-
Thoroughly researched
- By Dayle on 06-23-19
By: Matt Richtel
-
The Uninhabitable Earth
- Life After Warming
- By: David Wallace-Wells
- Narrated by: David Wallace-Wells
- Length: 9 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An "epoch-defining book" (The Guardian) and "this generation’s Silent Spring" (The Washington Post), The Uninhabitable Earth is both a travelogue of the near future and a meditation on how that future will look to those living through it - the ways that warming promises to transform global politics, the meaning of technology and nature in the modern world, the sustainability of capitalism and the trajectory of human progress. The Uninhabitable Earth is also an impassioned call to action.
-
-
A Must Read
- By Michael on 01-28-20
-
Bewilderment
- A Novel
- By: Richard Powers
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 7 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Theo Byrne is a promising young astrobiologist who has found a way to search for life on other planets dozens of light years away. He is also the widowed father of a most unusual nine-year-old. His son, Robin, is funny, loving, and filled with plans. He thinks and feels deeply, adores animals, and can spend hours painting elaborate pictures. He is also on the verge of being expelled from third grade for smashing his friend's face with a metal thermos.
-
-
Not Usually a Richard Powers Fan
- By Billy on 09-28-21
By: Richard Powers
-
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
-
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
-
When We Cease to Understand the World
- By: Benjamin Labatut, Adrian West - translator
- Narrated by: Adam Barr
- Length: 5 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When We Cease to Understand the World is a book about the complicated links between scientific and mathematical discovery, madness, and destruction. Fritz Haber, Alexander Grothendieck, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger - these are some of the luminaries into whose troubled lives Benjamín Labatut thrusts the listener, showing us how they grappled with the most profound questions of existence.
-
-
A Melange of Dark Genuis
- By Anonymous User on 01-08-22
By: Benjamin Labatut, and others
-
An Elegant Defense
- The Extraordinary New Science of the Immune System: A Tale in Four Lives
- By: Matt Richtel
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 12 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A magnificently reported and soulfully crafted exploration of the human immune system - the key to health and wellness, life and death. An epic, first-of-its-kind audiobook, entwining leading-edge scientific discovery with the intimate stories of four individual lives, by the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist.
-
-
Thoroughly researched
- By Dayle on 06-23-19
By: Matt Richtel
-
The Uninhabitable Earth
- Life After Warming
- By: David Wallace-Wells
- Narrated by: David Wallace-Wells
- Length: 9 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An "epoch-defining book" (The Guardian) and "this generation’s Silent Spring" (The Washington Post), The Uninhabitable Earth is both a travelogue of the near future and a meditation on how that future will look to those living through it - the ways that warming promises to transform global politics, the meaning of technology and nature in the modern world, the sustainability of capitalism and the trajectory of human progress. The Uninhabitable Earth is also an impassioned call to action.
-
-
A Must Read
- By Michael on 01-28-20
-
Bewilderment
- A Novel
- By: Richard Powers
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 7 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Theo Byrne is a promising young astrobiologist who has found a way to search for life on other planets dozens of light years away. He is also the widowed father of a most unusual nine-year-old. His son, Robin, is funny, loving, and filled with plans. He thinks and feels deeply, adores animals, and can spend hours painting elaborate pictures. He is also on the verge of being expelled from third grade for smashing his friend's face with a metal thermos.
-
-
Not Usually a Richard Powers Fan
- By Billy on 09-28-21
By: Richard Powers
-
Regeneration
- Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation
- By: Paul Hawken
- Narrated by: Feodor Chin, Bahni Turpin, Lauren Baldwin, and others
- Length: 18 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Regeneration offers a visionary new approach to climate change, one that weaves justice, climate, biodiversity, equity, and human dignity into a seamless tapestry of action, policy, and transformation that can end the climate crisis in one generation. It is the first book to describe and define the burgeoning regeneration movement spreading rapidly throughout the world.
-
-
Gigatons of positive steps to save the planet
- By Susan Sisler on 10-27-21
By: Paul Hawken
-
Braiding Sweetgrass
- Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants
- By: Robin Wall Kimmerer
- Narrated by: Robin Wall Kimmerer
- Length: 16 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As a botanist and professor of plant ecology, Robin Wall Kimmerer has spent a career learning how to ask questions of nature using the tools of science. As a Potawatomi woman, she learned from elders, family, and history that the Potawatomi, as well as a majority of other cultures indigenous to this land, consider plants and animals to be our oldest teachers.
-
-
Finally, Words
- By Donovan P Malley on 06-30-19
-
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 bestselling author of Leonardo da Vinci and Steve Jobs returns with a “compelling” (The Washington Post) 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
-
The Dawn of Everything
- A New History of Humanity
- By: David Graeber, David Wengrow
- Narrated by: Mark Williams
- Length: 24 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A trailblazing account of human history, challenging our most fundamental assumptions about social evolution - from the development of agriculture and cities to the emergence of "the state", political violence, and social inequality - and revealing new possibilities for human emancipation.
-
-
exactly what I've been looking for
- By DankTurtle on 11-10-21
By: David Graeber, and others
-
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 42 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, post-apocalyptic 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
-
Reign of Terror
- How the 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump
- By: Spencer Ackerman
- Narrated by: Spencer Ackerman
- Length: 13 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For an entire generation, at home and abroad, the United States has waged an endless conflict known as the War on Terror. In addition to multiple ground wars, the era pioneered drone strikes and industrial-scale digital surveillance, weakened the rule of law through indefinite detentions, sanctioned torture, and manipulated the truth about it all. These conflicts have yielded neither peace nor victory, but they have transformed America. Today’s nativist resurgence walked through a door opened by the 9/11 era. And that door remains open.
-
-
Insightful and true, but leftist
- By Danel.Rakovski on 08-18-21
By: Spencer Ackerman
-
The Fourth Turning
- An American Prophecy
- By: William Strauss, Neil Howe
- Narrated by: William Strauss, Neil Howe
- Length: 6 hrs and 1 min
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
William Strauss and Neil Howe will change the way you see the world - and your place in it. With blazing originality, The Fourth Turning illuminates the past, explains the present, and reimagines the future. Most remarkably, it offers an utterly persuasive prophecy about how America’s past will predict its future.
-
-
Authors take a "short" view of history
- By GiniO on 03-02-17
By: William Strauss, and others
-
Superintelligence
- Paths, Dangers, Strategies
- By: Nick Bostrom
- Narrated by: Napoleon Ryan
- Length: 14 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Superintelligence asks the questions: What happens when machines surpass humans in general intelligence? Will artificial agents save or destroy us? Nick Bostrom lays the foundation for understanding the future of humanity and intelligent life. The human brain has some capabilities that the brains of other animals lack. It is to these distinctive capabilities that our species owes its dominant position. If machine brains surpassed human brains in general intelligence, then this new superintelligence could become extremely powerful - possibly beyond our control.
-
-
Colossus: The Forbin Project is coming
- By Gary on 09-12-14
By: Nick Bostrom
-
A Thousand Brains
- A New Theory of Intelligence
- By: Jeff Hawkins, Richard Dawkins - foreword
- Narrated by: Jamie Renell, Richard Dawkins
- Length: 8 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For all of neuroscience's advances, we've made little progress on its biggest question: How do simple cells in the brain create intelligence? Jeff Hawkins and his team discovered that the brain uses map-like structures to build a model of the world - not just one model, but hundreds of thousands of models of everything we know. This discovery allows Hawkins to answer important questions about how we perceive the world, why we have a sense of self, and the origin of high-level thought.
-
-
Starts out good, ends up a train wreck
- By Warren on 03-15-21
By: Jeff Hawkins, and others
-
Sapiens
- A Brief History of Humankind
- By: Yuval Noah Harari
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 15 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Most books about the history of humanity pursue either a historical or a biological approach, but Dr. Yuval Noah Harari breaks the mold with this highly original book. From examining the role evolving humans have played in the global ecosystem to charting the rise of empires, Sapiens integrates history and science to reconsider accepted narratives, connect past developments with contemporary concerns, and examine specific events within the context of larger ideas.
-
-
Fascinating, despite claims of errors
- By Jonas Blomberg Ghini on 12-09-19
-
The Wizard and the Prophet
- Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow's World
- By: Charles C. Mann
- Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot
- Length: 18 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 40 years, Earth's population will reach 10 billion. Can our world support that? What kind of world will it be? Those answering these questions generally fall into two deeply divided groups - Wizards and Prophets, as Charles Mann calls them in this balanced, authoritative, nonpolemical new book. The Prophets, he explains, follow William Vogt, a founding environmentalist who believed that in using more than our planet has to give, our prosperity will lead us to ruin.
-
-
Fantastic
- By BKATX on 01-26-18
By: Charles C. Mann
-
Guns, Germs and Steel
- The Fate of Human Societies
- By: Jared Diamond
- Narrated by: Doug Ordunio
- Length: 16 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Having done field work in New Guinea for more than 30 years, Jared Diamond presents the geographical and ecological factors that have shaped the modern world. From the viewpoint of an evolutionary biologist, he highlights the broadest movements both literal and conceptual on every continent since the Ice Age, and examines societal advances such as writing, religion, government, and technology.
-
-
Great book, poor narration
- By Nick M. on 03-27-16
By: Jared Diamond
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
Average Customer RatingsReviews - 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.
5 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.
5 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.
5 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- David B
- 06-11-21
Important read but choppy
This is such an important subject and I’m amazed at the level of depth that the author/journalist invested in this. The sequence of the parts was choppy and didn’t get intertwined together as much as I would have liked. With this, The lessons and path forward that the author wants to share or that the scientists she worked with may have wanted to share were more muted or unclear than I had hoped for. But, an important read and very valuable piece of educational journalism.
3 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- oneluckywoman
- 02-02-22
Planet earth is F***ed
vert well written, interesting, lots of history, science and government (the Army Corps of Engineers. Our grandchildren's lives are going to be a living hell.
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Ben M
- 07-07-21
Kolbert does it again
I think it’s really hard to live up to The Sixth Extinction, but this book was a really good shot at it. I appreciated the ‘matter of fact’ness about where we are at and what’s going to need to be done to address climate.
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Sage W.
- 07-01-21
a bit monotone, important topic
I enjoyed the topic, but the speaker is a bit monotone and I found myself getting bored because of it. It's almost like they don't like historical non-fiction. You really have to enjoy history and non-fiction to not sound like you fate it in a recording, lol.
The story is interesting and worth listening to. About global warming and the risks of tampering with our world to solve it, rather than doing the right thing and ending emissions. She approaches the problem from most sides, outlining the pros and cons of various solutions. But she starts with historical examples where we've done this before as a species and it never went well for anyone, least of all us, or the other species around us.
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Douglas MacDonald
- 06-07-21
A Good look at the future of Nature
Relatively short and packed with information. Didn't come down firmly on the side of nature or technology, but instead fiercly realistic. An inportant read for pretty much everyone.
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Marcelo F. Marzola
- 06-26-21
Wonderful provocation
Great book, incredibly well written and intelligently provocative. In a world plagued with biases, it is refreshing to read a book that displays both sides of an argument throughout the narrative and promotes thought before opinion.
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Danielle Pierie
- 06-07-21
Thoughtful, easily digested
New takes on environmental issues, many ideas examined weren't previously on my radar. The nonfiction content is both interesting and accessible, there was minimal use of technical terminology. I learned without feeling lectured.
Each chapter has a bit of a plot arc and a hero to cheer for. The solutions Kolbert proposes aren't mainstream, you will walk away from this book wondering about new ways to mitigate human impact on the environment.
1 person found this helpful