The World Without Us Book Review

First off I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in environment conservation. Although, it is a little on the long side its a far cry from a science textbook, and the 353 pages go by pretty quickly. However, if you're looking for the movie 2012 in a literary form, this might not be for you. In "The World Without Us", the author Alan Weisman explores what would happen to our world if humans were to suddenly disappear. The novel shows the massive effect that humans have on the environment, and how in merely a few days the earth would begin the process of self-healing. He uses the city of New York and the Panama Canal to show how humans restrain the flow of oceans, and how with one day of unsupervised rainfall in New York, Manhattan would be inaccessible. Weisman also travels to various parts of the world that are already almost completely void of humans, such as the area around the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe in Russia, and the piece of land that separates North and South Korea. He uses these areas to represent how our world will recover when we all have left. It was also extremely interesting how Weisman explored nuclear waste plants, and showed how the affects of these plants will be our legacy on earth for thousands of years. I've recommended this book to many people already and if you've ever wondered what our planet might look like if not for us then this just might be the book for you!