This book combines two subjects that really stimulate my imagination: natural science and the post-apocalypse. I thought that the later chapters lost the thread of the narrative a bit, but the first half of the book was really interesting.

Fascinating, and a subject that is definitely worth pondering.

A rather intriguing take on the future of our planet and human civilization. However it is not some pandering book about everything we do wrong and why we suck, but simply begging the question of “What would happen if we disappeared?” This is the part that had me hooked, discovering all of the maintenance needed to hold up the subway systems of the world, all the way to Nuclear power plants. A splendid read.

A really frightening look at how long our planet would take to recover if we just disappeared. It really put into perspective the damage that we are doing to our only home and how irreversible some of it really is.

Hinter einem kataklysmischen (aber irgendwie wunderschönen) Gedankenexperiment verbirgt sich ein spannendes und kluges Buch über Ökologie und Erdgeschichte, das zu lesen viel Spaß gemacht hat. Einige Bilder sowie das Wort "Megafauna" werden mich noch lange begleiten.

A captivating look at how humans have impacted the world, and how quickly traces of us would vanish if we were to disappear. Some of it was excellent, but the lists of unfamiliar species were very tedious.

This is one of the most fascinating books I have ever read. Weisman describes what would happen to the world if we disappear. His accounts of how we have damaged our earth actually made me wish at one point that humans would disappear! Not necessarily seriously, but it really made me think of how even humans without technology and large, skyscraping cities have a large affect on the planet and animals. For a long time I really thought humans are the sole cause for the changes in our ecosystem, but these changes have been happening for millions of years. So while we might be speeding it up, the earth is just going through one of its regular changes and can always repair itself. Such a thought-provoking book!

Vivid, amusing, at times shocking -- Wiseman's meticulous images of how the world would handle humanity's disappearance engross the reader and linger in the mind. I'm a little in awe of how he managed to trace the consequences of humanity's presence here without condescending to the reader or falling completely over the edge in territory that can easily get hopelessly depressing. Focused, beautifully researched, motivating, even hopeful -- I'd recommend it to anyone.

The basic premise of the book is a hypothesis on what would happen to our world if humans just suddenly disappeared. Not all living things, just humans. The author points out quite early on that nature would simply reclaim our built environment, in some cases quite rapidly, and he backs it up with a lot of scientific fact and expert opinions. There are some pretty interesting scenarios here, such as what will likely happen when there are no humans to monitor our built environment, such as the prevention of water into the Manhattan subway system, and in the vast petroleum fields of Houston. The author also uses some actual environments to illustrate his theories, such as Pripyat, Ukraine (Chernobyl) and the completely unpopulated town of Varosha in Cyprus (restricted from human access by the Turkish military since 1974).

The book is slow going in other sections that stray from this theme. The chapter on the long-term impact of petroleum based plastics in our environment offered a few details I was not aware of, but was a little preachy and seemed off the subject. I was much more interested to learn that the Chunnel and Mount Rushmore may be our most long lasting man-made creations.

Overall, it’s worth a look, but a tough book to read cover to cover.

I have a lot of thoughts regarding this book. It will not hold up well over time. This book will easily crossover to historical non-fiction. It was a bit of a rant. To me the book was very biased. During parts to the book I listened via audiobook as I was driving by thousands of open space acres in Colorado. Driving by untouched wildness as the author is going on about the billions of birds dying every year due to mirrored window skyscrapers. Hm. Seems like they have plenty of places to live naturally here. I have never seen a domestic cat described as such an evil world-dominating villain in my life.

Frequently I thought about the ways things have changed today. I kept thinking "Yeah that was a bigger issue not long ago but we have made new discoveries, made changes. The author doesn't know about ". Now, this doesn't apply to everything but changes are being made; the younger generations tend to think differently about the Earth. I could see how at the time of publication this book probably lit some fires (hm is that a pun) and got people excited.

I also thought at first, this book could have been a companion to Sapiens'. Almost like Sapiens in reverse but with it's lack of objectivity, not true.

I am sure some of the facts mention will stick with me forever. I guess at the end of the day this book presented Earth as the victim and anything or anyone modifying the Earth is bottom of the barrel scum. I guess I was expecting something more hopeful? Less blaming and finger pointing. To me this book wasn't good journalism (unless it's sensationalism) and really with all the negativity it wasn't even scientific.