This thought-experiment exploration of the environmental damage humans have inflicted on the natural world (and ourselves) makes for some bleak reading. The easy conclusion is that all life except us, our domestic animals, and a few parasites would be better off in a world without us, but Weisman manages to balance the book so that paradoxically at its core is a message of hope -- if we were to disappear, life can and will adapt to the toxins and pollution we've left behind, and Earth will recover.

What remains is the stark, implicit question: are we intelligent enough to make choices so that Earth can recover even while we're still here, or are we truly a plague species doomed to follow the same path of every other animal that exceeds its resources?