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Hope Dies Last: Visionary People Across the World, Fighting to Find Us a Future Audiobook
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One of Heatmap's 18 Climate Books to Read in 2025
The award-winning environmental journalist’s extraordinary, long-awaited portrait of hope and resilience as we face a fractured and uncertain future
In this profoundly human and moving narrative, the bestselling author of The World Without Us returns with a book ten years in the making: a study of what it means to be a human on the front lines of our planet’s existential crisis. His new book, Hope Dies Last, is a literary evocation of our current predicament and the core resolve of our species against the most precarious odds we have ever faced.
To write this book, Weisman traveled the globe, witnessing climate upheaval and other devastations, and meeting the people striving to mitigate and undo our past transgressions. From the flooding Marshall Islands to revived wetlands in Iraq, from the Netherlands and Bangladesh to the Korean DMZ and to cities and coastlines in the U.S. and around the world, he has encountered the best of humanity battling heat, hunger, rising tides, and imperiled nature. He profiles the innovations of big thinkers—engineers, scientists, conservationists, economists, architects, and artists—as they conjure wildly creative, imaginative responses to an uncertain, ominous future. At this unprecedented point in history, as our collective exploits on this planet may lead to our own undoing and we could be among the species marching toward extinction, they refuse to accept defeat.
Hope Dies Last fills a crucial gap in the global conversation: Having reached a point of no return in our climate confrontation, how do we feel, behave, act, plan, and dream as we approach a future decidedly different from what we had expected?
* This audiobook edition includes a downloadable PDF containing maps of select regions discussed in the book.
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"In Hope Dies Last, Alan Weisman takes us on a global journey to witness both humanity's impact on our planet and our extraordinary resilience in the face of environmental crisis. Through vivid portraits of flooding islands, revived wetlands, and imperiled coastlines, he introduces us to the engineers, scientists, and visionaries working to imagine creative solutions for an uncertain future. Weisman masterfully captures the human spirit as we confront perhaps our greatest challenge: how to adapt to and persist in a world fundamentally altered by climate change. This profound narrative offers not just a clear-eyed look at our predicament, but a testament to the remarkable human capacity for hope even in extraordinarily challenging times."
— Neil Shubin, author of the national bestseller Your Inner Fish and Ends of the Earth
Quotes
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Consider this a non-fiction companion to Kim Stanley Robinson's Ministry for the Future: Alan Weisman has traveled the world to find the people doing what they can to slow down the greatest tragedy in our history. You'll be inspired--maybe even to become one of these people yourself.
— Bill McKibben, author of The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon -
Consider this a non-fiction companion to Kim Stanley Robinson's Ministry for the Future: Alan Weisman has traveled the world to find the people doing what they can to slow down the greatest tragedy in our history. You'll be inspired--maybe even to become one of these people yourself.
— Bill McKibben, author of The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon -
In Hope Dies Last, Alan Weisman takes us on a global journey to witness both humanity's impact on our planet and our extraordinary resilience in the face of environmental crisis. Through vivid portraits of flooding islands, revived wetlands, and imperiled coastlines, he introduces us to the engineers, scientists, and visionaries working to imagine creative solutions for an uncertain future. Weisman masterfully captures the human spirit as we confront perhaps our greatest challenge: how to adapt to and persist in a world fundamentally altered by climate change. This profound narrative offers not just a clear-eyed look at our predicament, but a testament to the remarkable human capacity for hope even in extraordinarily challenging times.
— Neil Shubin, author of the national bestseller Your Inner Fish and Ends of the Earth -
Hope Dies Last is a book of heroism, courage, and selfless love. Every story is a way forward. This is one of the most exciting books I've ever read, full of innovation. Alan Weisman has written the exact book we need to fight for our place on Earth.
— Louise Erdrich, author of The Mighty Red -
"Hope Dies Last is a deeply reported investigation into what it means to be alive on a rapidly-warming planet. Weisman travels the world to meet with scientists, scholars, activists, and religious leaders who understand that the fate of the world as we know it is at stake and who are driven to do something about it. What Weisman discovers is not just brilliant minds and heroic deeds, but a kind of desperate love for this miraculous planet we live on. Hope Dies Last is one of those rare books that makes you proud to be human.
— Jeff Goodell, author of the New York Times bestseller The Heat Will Kill You First -
What a wonderful, exhilarating, life-affirming book! The people, creatures and ambitions Weisman introduces us to are ingenious, revelatory, and awe-inspiring, and the wider world needs to know about them. Reading this book made me not only glad to be alive, but proud to be human, and deeply grateful for the extraordinarily brilliant and generous souls inhabiting these pages, not least Alan Weisman himself.
— John Vaillant, award winning author of Fire Weather -
In Hope Dies Last, Alan Weisman takes us on a global journey to witness both humanity's impact on our planet and our extraordinary resilience in the face of environmental crisis. Through vivid portraits of flooding islands, revived wetlands, and imperiled coastlines, he introduces us to the engineers, scientists, and visionaries working to imagine creative solutions for an uncertain future. Weisman masterfully captures the human spirit as we confront perhaps our greatest challenge: how to adapt to and persist in a world fundamentally altered by climate change. This profound narrative offers not just a clear-eyed look at our predicament, but a testament to the remarkable human capacity for hope even in extraordinarily challenging times.
— Neil Shubin, author of the national bestseller Your Inner Fish and Ends of the Earth -
Hope Dies Last is a book of heroism, courage, and selfless love. Every story is a way forward. This is one of the most exciting books I've ever read, full of innovation. Alan Weisman has written the exact book we need to fight for our place on earth.
— Louise Erdrich, author of The Mighty Red -
Hope Dies Last is a book of heroism, courage, and selfless love. Every story is a way forward. This is one of the most exciting books I've ever read, full of innovation. Alan Weisman has written the exact book we need to fight for our place on Earth.
— Louise Erdrich, author of The Mighty Red and Pulitzer Prize-winning The Night Watchman -
"Consider this a non-fiction companion to Kim Stanley Robinson's Ministry for the Future: Alan Weisman has traveled the world to find the people doing what they can to slow down the greatest tragedy in our history. You'll be inspired--maybe even to become one of these people yourself.
— Bill McKibben, author of The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon"Hope Dies Last is a deeply reported investigation into what it means to be alive on a rapidly-warming planet. Weisman travels the world to meet with scientists, scholars, activists, and religious leaders who understand that the fate of the world as we know it is at stake and who are driven to do something about it. What Weisman discovers is not just brilliant minds and heroic deeds, but a kind of desperate love for this miraculous planet we live on. Hope Dies Last is one of those rare books that makes you proud to be human. -
What a wonderful, exhilarating, life-affirming book! The people, creatures and ambitions Weisman introduces us to are ingenious, revelatory, and awe-inspiring, and the wider world needs to know about them. Reading this book made me not only glad to be alive, but proud to be human, and deeply grateful for the extraordinarily brilliant and generous souls inhabiting these pages, not least Alan Weisman himself.
— John Vaillant, author of Fire Weather, Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize -
What a wonderful, exhilarating, life-affirming book! The people, creatures and ambitions Weisman introduces us to are ingenious, revelatory, and awe-inspiring, and the wider world needs to know about them. Reading this book made me not only glad to be alive, but proud to be human, and deeply grateful for the extraordinarily brilliant and generous souls inhabiting these pages, not least Alan Weisman himself.
— John Vaillant, author of Fire Weather, Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize -
“Weisman displays a novelist’s flair for characterization . . . . The vibrant portraits serve as a rousing testimony to human ingenuity and perseverance. . . . This inspires.
— Publishers Weekly -
"Profoundly human and moving.
— Next Big Idea Club
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About Alan Weisman
Alan Weisman is the bestselling author of The World Without Us, and an award-winning journalist whose reports have appeared in Harper’s, the New York Times Magazine, the Atlantic Monthly, Discover, and on NPR, among others. A former contributing editor to the Los Angeles Times Magazine, he is a senior radio producer for Homelands Productions and teaches international journalism at the University of Arizona. His essay “Earth Without People,” on which The World Without Us expands, was selected for Best American Science Writing 2006, and he is interviewed frequently about how humans exist on the planet.
About Fred Sanders
Fred Sanders, an actor and Earphones Award–winning narrator, has received critics’ praise for his audio narrations that range from nonfiction, memoir, and fiction to mystery and suspense. He been seen on Broadway in The Buddy Holly Story, in national tours for Driving Miss Daisy and Big River, and on such television shows as Seinfeld, The West Wing, Will and Grace, Numb3rs,Titus, and Malcolm in the Middle. His films include Sea of Love, The Shadow, and the Oscar-nominated short Culture. He is a native New Yorker and Yale graduate.