Cherie's Place

Synopsis from book cover:
How would the world change if human beings vanished from the earth right now, for good? What would the planet be like in a day, a week, a month… a millennium? Just how long will our greatest achievements and our biggest mistakes last after we are gone?

To discover the answers, Alan Weisman looks to areas of the world that are currently unoccupied and speaks to experts in fields ranging from nuclear physics to archaeology. He reveals how the natural world would react to our disappearance and wrestles with some of the key concerns of our existence to offer an intriguing glimpse of the real legacy of our time on the planet.

Review:
Alan Weisman spoke to various specialists to find out how the world natural world might react to our Man’s disappearance from the planet.  He spoke to specialists such as palaeontologists, structural engineers, biologists, art conservators, diamond miners, marine biologists, astrophysicists, and even Buddhist monks. They were all interesting in their own right.  The book explores which things would last, which things would disappear and the amazing ability of the earth to heal itself. The book also describes a pre-human world and what the world might have looked like if man had not been present.

Different areas of science are covered in the book so it was a very interesting read for me and I found myself learning things I didn’t know.  I found the book lived up to what it set out to do. The chapters ‘Polymers Are Forever’ and the ‘Petro Patch’ were especially interesting to me, the latter making me think even more about the gulf oil spill early last year.  It is likely I will re-read the book in the future.

Tags: Book Review, Books, Factual, Reading