Pollution, famine, pandemic diseases, record-setting weather events, social unrest and cultural inequalities-all are the result of the collective choices humans make. Our drive to survive, combined with our unique abilities, has turned us into the greatest threat to our future. Drawing from seminal research about the rise of the Anthropocene age, David Walter presents a clear, elegant view of how we got ourselves into this conundrum. Grounded in a deep understanding of science and cultural history, Walter masterfully tells the story of how Homo sapiens moved from one challenge to the next with the best of intentions while not comprehending the consequences. Encompassing our tribal origins to our current atomic age, from the impulse to shape stones for tools to the development of internal combustion, this sweeping narrative ultimately offers a rational route toward a sustainable, livable future, and the role each of us can play in that transformation.
Industry Reviews
What do we do when our survival instincts no longer serve us? This is one of the questions being explored in this book. Thorough, well-written, and a bit scary. The author not only investigates the problems we are facing, but he also investigates solutions. This is a book that everyone should read.
-Wanda Isle
David Walter sets himself what seems an impossible narrative task: To understand why we're in this global, environmental crisis, and to offer a clear response toward sensible solutions. Walter does not beat the cultural guilt drum. Instead he presents us with the dance through the ages, revealing how one step led to another. Drawing from an exhaustive, thorough, and exemplary stack of sources, Walter reveals how he faced the conundrum facing all homo sapiens. The work is part manifesto, part natural history, and part anthropological thesis, braided together into an immensely readable narrative that had me thinking I was gathered at the dining table with a few of my closest friends, with Walter taking us from an initially fraught, hopeless assessment of our world toward the path illuminated by science and compassion for each other.
-Susan Thurston Hamerski