The Uninhabitable Earth

Life After Warming

By: David Wallace-Wells

Narrated by: David Wallace-Wells

Length: 9 hrs

Publisher's summary

Number-one New York Times best seller • "The Uninhabitable Earth hits you like a comet, with an overflow of insanely lyrical prose about our pending Armageddon." (Andrew Solomon, author of The Noonday Demon)

With a new afterword

It is worse, much worse, than you think. If your anxiety about global warming is dominated by fears of sea-level rise, you are barely scratching the surface of what terrors are possible - food shortages, refugee emergencies, climate wars, and economic devastation.

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. For just as the world was brought to the brink of catastrophe within the span of a lifetime, the responsibility to avoid it now belongs to a single generation - today’s.

"The Uninhabitable Earth is the most terrifying book I have ever read. Its subject is climate change, and its method is scientific, but its mode is Old Testament. The book is a meticulously documented, white-knuckled tour through the cascading catastrophes that will soon engulf our warming planet." (Farhad Manjoo, The New York Times)

Praise for The Uninhabitable Earth

"Riveting.... Some readers will find Mr. Wallace-Wells’s outline of possible futures alarmist. He is indeed alarmed. You should be, too." (The Economist)

"Potent and evocative.... Wallace-Wells has resolved to offer something other than the standard narrative of climate change.... He avoids the ‘eerily banal language of climatology’ in favor of lush, rolling prose." (Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times)

"The book has potential to be this generation’s Silent Spring." (The Washington Post)

"The Uninhabitable Earth, which has become a best seller, taps into the underlying emotion of the day: fear.... I encourage people to read this book." (Alan Weisman, The New York Review of Books)

©2019 David Wallace-Wells (P)2019 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

"Most of us know the gist, if not the details, of the climate change crisis. And yet it is almost impossible to sustain strong feelings about it. David Wallace-Wells has now provided the details, and with writing that is not only clear and forceful, but often imaginative and even funny, he has found a way to make the information deeply felt. This is a profound book, which simultaneously makes me terrified and hopeful about the future, ashamed and proud of being a human." (Jonathan Safran Foer, author of Everything Is Illuminated)

"David Wallace-Wells argues that the impacts of climate change will be much graver than most people realize, and he's right. The Uninhabitable Earth is a timely and provocative work." (Elizabeth Kolbert, author of The Sixth Extinction)

“A brilliant new book...a remorseless, near-unbearable account of what we are doing to our planet." (John Lanchester, The New York Times Book Review)

Don’t read if you have depressive tendencies.

The book is realistic about what is sure to come and it’s not good... at ALL. So stay away if you’re psychologically vulnerable.

But we stagnated even when we knew 100 years ago that pollution is not good and now it’s too late to avoid a significant catastrophic future.

He does a great job showing what’s to expect with 2-3 degrees of warming.

Classic mistake

The book is excellent ... at least, as good as a book involving the depressing subject matter found therein can be.

Sadly, the author missed the lesson of a lawyer who represents himself in court having a fool for a client. Listening to this audiobook is an experience in listening to the author's inner voice. Unfortunately, that inner voice does not translate well in performance. Badly broken up and over emphasized phrasing detracts from the experience of listening to the narrative, to the point where you turn it off repeatedly just to take a break from the effort to listen. Wallace-Wells would have been better off hiring a professional who better communicates the author's thoughts and ideas in a manner that illuminates, as opposed to detracting.

Dark

A very dim outlook, a lyric essay that shows how utterly and completely fucked we are.

A tough book to listen to.

Very sobering. Let it scare you into action not hopelessness. When we accept how things truly we can truly change things for the better.

wow.

thank you this was a great read. We all want to unite but status quo is so much easier. we all need more books like this to get is moving

Essential

An essential compilation of data and a necessary, if not vital, call to action.

I wept profusely

don't look away

if you don't want to stare the reality of climate change in the face, don't read this book. go back to watching your cat videos. but if you want to grapple with the emotional and epistemological crisis we face, read on.

I wish everyone on Earth would read this book.

I was already convinced that the Earth is facing disaster, but this book listed even more ways disaster will come, and how those ways might interact to make the Earth unlivable. I liked the narration. With few exceptions, I prefer audiobooks that are read by their authors, because they know precisely what they want to communicate to the listener. The book covers Global Warming from many angles: science, history, economics, philosophy, psychology, futurism. I didn't find it repetitive. I was hoping to hear something about fusion power, but it wasn't mentioned at all, not even to shrug it off as too unlikely to rescue us in time. I was impressed by the author's honesty and how much research he put into this book.

For your grandchildren’s sake read this book

FOX NEWS IS THE FAKE NEWS
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As amazing as it is terrifying!

I knew climate change was a cataclysmic problem but my god, David has designed the most circumspect, informative, technical, yet graspable and humanistic explanation of climate change I've ever heard. A true masterpiece.