In twenty-six essays—one for each letter of the alphabet—the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sixth Extinction takes us on a hauntingly illustrated journey through the history of climate change and the uncertainties of our future. Climate change resists narrative—and yet some account of what’s happening is needed. Millions of lives are at stake, and upward of a million species. And there are decisions to be made, even though it’s unclear who, exactly, will make them. In H Is for Hope, Elizabeth Kolbert investigates the landscape of climate change—from “A”, for Svante Arrhenius, who created the world’s first climate model in 1894, to “Z”, for the Colorado River Basin, ground zero for climate change in the United States. Along the way she looks at Greta Thunburg’s “blah blah blah” speech (“B”), learns to fly an all-electric plane (“E”), experiments with the effects of extreme temperatures on the human body (“T”), and struggles with the deep uncertainty of the future of climate change (“U”). Adapted from essays originally published in The New Yorker and beautifully illustrated by Wesley Allsbrook, H Is for Hope is simultaneously inspiring, alarming, and darkly humorous—a unique examination of our changing world.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Sixth Extinction returns to humanity’s transformative impact on the environment, now asking: After doing so much damage, can we change nature, this time to save it? RECOMMENDED BY PRESIDENT OBAMA AND BILL GATES • SHORTLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE FOR WRITING • ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Time, Esquire, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews • “Beautifully and insistently, Kolbert shows us that it is time to think radically about the ways we manage the environment.”—Helen Macdonald, The New York Times With a new afterword by the author 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. In Under a White Sky, Elizabeth Kolbert takes a hard look at the new world we are creating. Along the way, she meets biologists 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 ten-thousand-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.
A journalist reassesses the complex workings of power in New York in a collection of incisive portraits of such figures as Boss Tweed, Hillary Clinton, Rudolph Giuliani, Michael Bloomberg, Al Sharpton, and others to explain why certain people attain power, how they use it, and how they lose it. 15,000 first printing.
ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW'S 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR A major book 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. This time around, the cataclysm is us. In The Sixth Extinction, two-time winner of the National Magazine Award and New Yorker writer Elizabeth Kolbert draws on the work of scores of researchers in half a dozen disciplines, accompanying many of them into the field: geologists who study deep ocean cores, botanists who follow the tree line as it climbs up the Andes, marine biologists who dive off the Great Barrier Reef. She introduces us to a dozen species, some already gone, others facing extinction, including the Panamian golden frog, staghorn coral, the great auk, and the Sumatran rhino. Through these stories, Kolbert provides a moving account of the disappearances occurring all around us and traces the evolution of extinction as concept, from its first articulation by Georges Cuvier in revolutionary Paris up through the present day. The sixth extinction is likely to be mankind's most lasting legacy; as Kolbert observes, it compels us to rethink the fundamental question of what it means to be human.
A new edition of the book that launched Elizabeth Kolbert's career as an environmental writer--updated with three new chapters, making it, yet again, "irreplaceable" (Boston Globe). Elizabeth Kolbert's environmental classic Field Notes from a Catastrophe first developed out of a groundbreaking, National Magazine Award-winning three-part series in The New Yorker. She expanded it into a still-concise yet richly researched and damning book about climate change: a primer on the greatest challenge facing the world today. But in the years since, the story has continued to develop; the situation has become more dire, even as our understanding grows. Now, Kolbert returns to the defining book of her career. She has added a chapter bringing things up-to-date on the existing text, plus three new chapters--on ocean acidification, the tar sands, and a Danish town that's gone carbon neutral--making it, again, a must-read for our moment.
An innovatively packaged literary anthology published to commemorate the International Polar Year-and remind us what we're in danger of losing. The Arctic and Antarctic ice shelves have been an object of obsession for as long as we've known they existed. Countless explorers, such as Richard Byrd, Ernest Shackleton, and Robert Falcon Scott, have risked their lives to chart their frozen landscapes. Now, for the first time in human history, we are in legitimate danger of seeing polar ice dramatically shrink, break apart, or even disappear. The Ends of the Earth, a collection of the very best writing on the Arctic and Antarctic, will simultaneously commemorate four centuries of exploring and scientific study, and make the call for preservation. Stocked with first-person narratives, cultural histories, nature and science writing, and fiction, this book is a compendium of the greats of their fields: including legendary polar explorers and such writers as Jon Krakauer, Jack London, Diane Ackerman, Barry Lopez, and Ursula K. LeGuin. Edited by two contemporary authorities on exploring and the environment, and published to coincide with the International Polar Year, The Ends of the Earth is a memorable collection of terrific writing-and a lasting contribution to the debate over global warming and the future of the polar regions themselves.
In this young readers adaptation of the New York Times-bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning The Sixth Extinction, Elizabeth Kolbert tells us why and how human beings have altered life on the planet in a way no species has before. Over the last half-billion years, there have been five mass extinctions, when the diversity of life on earth suddenly and dramatically contracted. Scientists around the world are monitoring the sixth extinction, predicted to be the most devastating extinction event since the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs. Adapting from her New York Times-bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning adult nonfiction, Elizabeth Kolbert explores how humans are altering life on Earth.
Elizabeth Kolbert's environmental classic Field Notes from a Catastrophe first developed out of a groundbreaking, award-winning three-part series in The New Yorker. She expanded it into a still-concise yet richly researched and damning book about climate change: a primer on the greatest challenge facing the world today. In the years since, the story has continued to develop; the situation has become more dire, even as our understanding of it grows. Now Kolbert returns to the defining book of her career. She'll add a chapter bringing things up to date on the existing text, plus she'll add three new chapters - on ocean acidification, the tar sands, and a Danish town that's gone carbon neutral. It will, once again, be a must-read for our moment.
_________________ 'A superbly crafted, diligently compressed vision of a world spiralling towards destruction' - Observer 'Kolbert mesmerises with her poetic cadence in this riveting view of the apocalypse already upon us' - Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. 'The most frightening book I've read this century' - Times Literary Supplement _________________ Elizabeth Kolbert's environmental classic Field Notes from a Catastrophe first developed out of a groundbreaking, award-winning three-part series in The New Yorker. She expanded it into a still-concise yet richly researched and damning book about climate change: a primer on the greatest challenge facing the world today. In the years since, the story has continued to develop; the situation has become more dire, even as our understanding of it grows. Now Kolbert returns to the defining book of her career, with new chapters on ocean acidification, the tar sands, and a Danish town that's gone carbon neutral. Field Notes from a Catastrophe remains as necessary as ever, and a must-read for our moment.
The Elizabeth Stories serves as a legacy of Alfred Baroodys wife, Elizabeththe authorwho previously published several articles, short stories, and books. This is a collection of ten short stories and two novelettes compiled into one book. These are stories about adventure, action, mystery, and so much more.
Published on the occasion of the exhibition Elizabeth Osborne: the color of light, held at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, June 26-September 20, 2009.
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