The World Without Us
Alan Weisman
I was pretty disappointed in this book. The premise–what would happen to the physical and living environment if humanity disappeared?–is an interesting one, but I think the author handles it poorly. There is almost no description in the book of why the thought experiment is one worth undertaking, and there is no clear narrative arc holding the different chapters together. They cover a weird grab-bag of topics, such as nuclear waste, birds, New York City… The author is a journalist and I think that manifested itself in an unfortunate way, with the book coming across as a series of gee-whiz vignettes without much to bind them together.