News
General Interest
UA journalism professor to discuss bestselling book at UA Bookstore
September 25, 2007
By Stephanie Doster
Alan Weisman, acclaimed environmental writer and journalism professor at The University of Arizona, will be on the UA campus this week to discuss his bestselling book, The World Without Us.
Based on hard science and interviews with experts from all over the world, the book explores what Earth would be like if people disappeared, and readers can’t seem to get enough of it.
“Readers get to see the future in such a way that they are not consumed by fears that we’re all going to die, because when the book begins, we’re already dead. You don’t have to worry about that,” Weisman said. “The book isn’t so much telling readers what is; it’s opening their minds to thinking about their own lives and their own impacts. The way I presented this particular topic liberates people to let their imagination literally go wild.”
The 320-page book hit stores on July 10 and quickly jumped onto numerous bestseller lists, including The New York Times list for hardcover non-fiction. The book also has won wide acclaim from critics and readers alike in Canada and Europe, and will be translated into at least twenty-one languages. Plans also are in the works with a French documentary film company to recreate the book on the big screen.
Weisman attributes the book’s success, in part, to the fact that it packages important information in a way that readers can understand and relate to.
“I didn’t want only the usual suspects to read the book. I wanted it to draw in people who usually are turned off by environmental literature because it is too sobering or depressing or because politically they don’t trust it,” Weisman said. “I don’t pull any punches. I’m dead honest about how serious the environmental issues are. It’s the intriguing structure that keeps people turning the pages.”
The book’s popularity and compelling focus have landed Weisman interviews with The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart and Matt Lauer of the Today Show, and launched him on a North American book signing circuit. He is scheduled to tour parts of Europe this fall and China in December.
But first he will be bringing his work closer to home. Beginning Monday, September 24, Weisman will book-sign his way through Flagstaff, Prescott, and Tempe before arriving in Tucson. Weisman will be on the main floor of the UA Campus Bookstore at noon on Friday, September 28, to read from the book, with a discussion to follow. He also will be at Antigone Books, 411 N. Fourth Ave., at 7 p.m. on Saturday, September 29.
The book poses what Weisman calls "a remotely plausible but nevertheless possible scenario" in which people disappear suddenly. Drawing on present-day science, Weisman shows that nature will prove irrepressible in the absence of humans: landscaping devours buildings, rivers reclaim Manhattan, and various creatures, some of which are now struggling, thrive.
The book’s message, he said, is that life is resilient and could make a comeback, given the right space, care, and time.
“The book takes people out so we can see more clearly what we are leaving behind and what we have done that nature will have to contend with to overcome,” Weisman said. “I want readers to think about how we can have nature and still be part of it ourselves, the way we were originally, as mammals.”