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Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future Audiobook
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Publisher Description
The New York Times bestselling author of The Sixth Extinction and Field Notes from a Catastrophe returns to humanity’s transformative impact on the environment in Under a White Sky.
That man should have dominion “over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth” is a prophecy that has hardened into fact. So pervasive are human impacts on the planet that it’s said we live in a new geological epoch: the Anthropocene. The question we now face is: Can we change nature, this time in order to save it?
Elizabeth Kolbert, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Sixth Extinction, takes a hard look at the new world we are creating. Along the way, she meets scientists who are trying to preserve the world’s rarest fish, which lives in a single, tiny pool in the middle of the Mojave; engineers who are turning carbon emissions to stone in Iceland; Australian researchers who are trying to develop a “super coral” that can survive on a hotter globe; and physicists who are contemplating shooting tiny diamonds into the stratosphere to cool the earth.
One way to look at human civilization, says Kolbert, is as a ten-thousand-year exercise in defying nature. In The Sixth Extinction, she explored the ways in which our capacity for destruction has reshaped the natural world. Now she examines how the very sorts of interventions that have imperiled our planet are increasingly seen as the only hope for its salvation. By turns inspiring, terrifying, and darkly comic, Under a White Sky is an utterly original examination of the challenges we face.
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“Lowman narrates clearly, enunciates precisely, and provides a sense of immediacy while bringing energy and intelligence to the task. Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award.”
— AudioFile
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“A superb and honest reflection of our extraordinary time.”
— Nature -
“Beautifully and insistently, Kolbert shows us that it is time to think radically about the ways we manage the environment.”
— New York Times -
“A darkly comic tale of human hubris and imagination that could either end in flames or in a new vision of Paradise.”
— Rolling Stone -
“Brilliantly executed and urgently necessary.”
— Publishers Weekly (starred review) -
“A master elucidator, Kolbert is gratifyingly direct as she assesses our predicament between a rock and a hard place.”
— Booklist (starred review) -
“Every paragraph of Kolbert’s books has a mountain of reading and reporting behind it…Urgent, absolutely necessary reading as a portrait of our devastated planet.”
— Kirkus Reviews (starred review) -
“A sobering and realistic look at humankind’s perhaps misplaced faith that technology can work with nature to produce a more livable planet.”
— Library Journal (starred review)
Awards
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#1 Amazon bestseller
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Winner of an AudioFile Earphones Award
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A New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice of the Week
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A Barack Obama Reading List Pick for 2021
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An AudioFile Best Audiobook of the Year in Nonfiction
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Shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize
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A Washington Post Top 10 Book of 2021
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A Time Magazine Best Book of the Year
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A Smithsonian Magazine Pick of Best Books of 2021
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An Esquire Magazine Best Book of the Year
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A Vulture.com Pick of 2021's Best Books
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A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2021
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One of Kirkus Reviews’ Best Books of 2021
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A Library Journal Book of the Year
Under a White Sky Listener Reviews
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" I am giving it 2-stars because we need to talk about these topics. But honestly, journalist dramatist pseudo-scientific again! It works with most liberal-left learning people, but this is the type of writing that upset the other half of the political sphere. "
— monsegu, 8/4/2021
About Elizabeth Kolbert
Elizabeth Kolbert is the author of several books, including The Sixth Extinction, for which she won the Pulitzer Prize. She has also been awarded two National Magazine Awards for her writing at the New Yorker, where she has been a staff writer since 1999, and the Blake-Dodd Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
About Rebecca Lowman
Rebecca Lowman is an actress and audiobook narrator who has won numerous Earphones Awards. She has starred in numerous television shows, including Law & Order, Big Love, NCIS, and Grey’s Anatomy, among many others. She earned her MFA from Columbia University.