The World Without Us

The World Without Us was published in 2007 by Alan Weisman, an award-winning journalist whose work has appeared in Harper’s, The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, and Discover, among others. The book expands upon his essay “Earth Without People” (2005), which was included in the essay collection Best American Science Writing 2006, a yearly anthology series published by Ecco Press (HarperCollins) from 2000 through 2012. The World Without Us spent nine weeks in the top 10 on The New York Times Best Sellers list and appeared in several best books and best nonfiction books lists for 2007. It was a finalist for the National Book Critics’ Circle Award, the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize, the Orion Prize, and the Rachel Carson Environment Book Award.

The World Without Us can be classified as postapocalyptic literature, but it is unusual in that it is nonfiction: Its speculative elements coincide with detailed reporting on current scientific research. For some critics, such as the biogeographer Philip Stott, the imaginative component makes the book closer to “dystopian specu­lative fiction” than to science writing; in Stott’s view, the fact that the Earth itself is in a constant state of flux makes predictions about the very distant future purely fanciful (Stott, Philip.