The World Without Us

Author Reading and Discussion Brown Bag Lunch

Join Alan Weisman, best-selling author of "The World Without Us" for a lunch reading and discussion.

In "The World Without Us," Alan Weisman offers an utterly original
approach to questions of humanity's impact on the planet: he asks us to envision our Earth, without us.

"The World Without Us" reveals how, just days after humans disappear,
floods in New York's subways would start eroding the city's foundations,and how, as the world's cities crumble, asphalt jungles give way to real ones. It describes the distinct ways that organic and chemically-treated farms would revert to wild, how billions more birds would flourish, and how cockroaches in unheated cities would perish without us. 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 pre-human world inhabited by megafauna like giant sloths that stood taller than mammoths – Weisman illustrates what the planet might be like
today, if not for us.

Author Bill McKibben calls "The World Without Us," "one of the grandest thought experiments of our time," and Louise Erdrich says it's "the most harrowing and, oddly, comforting book on the environment that I've read in many years."

Alan Weisman's work has appeared in many publications including Harper's and the New York Times Magazine, and he is author of several books including "Gaviotas: A Village to Reinvent the World."

This event is free and open to the public.
You are welcome to bring a lunch; light refreshments will be provided.

See more events associated with the Magazine department of the J-School.

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