The World Without Us
New York: Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press, 2007. First Edition, First Printing. Hardcover boards. Very Good+ / Dust jacket Near Fine. Item #5315
ISBN: 9780312347291
All profits from the sale of this item will be donated to Bird Alliance of Oregon.
First Edition, First Printing, with full number line. Signed by the author in pen across the title page. Green cloth boards show minor cosmetic flaws with three small stains, including lightly bumped corners and other small areas of edge wear; Very Good+ with a clean interior and a tight, sound binding. The dust jacket is Near Fine, price intact, with minor edge wear, now protected in a removable archival cover. A handsome copy showing some wear to the boards but still presenting beautifully.
In a 2007 interview with OpenCulture, Weisman reflected on why he chose to write about environmental awareness by asking readers to imagine a world suddenly absent of human life: "Most great environmental writing does not get read by a lot of the people who ought to be learning about it because the nearer-term possibilities just seem sometimes so frightening, or so depressing, that nobody really wants to pick up a book to read it. By structuring the book the way that I did, I disarm the automatic fear that repels a lot of people from reading about the environment. People don’t want to read something that seems too threatening. On a subconscious or even a conscious level, they don’t want to be worried we’re all going to die. In my book, killing us off in the first couple of pages means people don’t have to worry about dying because we’re already dead, and that’s a relief in a sense. The idea of glimpsing the future is irresistible to all of us and I establish pretty quickly that is not going to just be me speculating, it’s going to be some hard science writing based on a lot of reporting, of talking to experts or eyewitnesses whose guesses will be far more interesting than most peoples’."
Price: $115.00 other currencies