Under a White Sky by Elizabeth Kolbert
NATIONAL BESTSELLER * The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sixth Extinction returns to humanity's transformative impact on the environment, now asking: After doing so much damage, can we change nature, this time to save it?RECOMMENDED BY PRESIDENT OBAMA AND BILL GATES * SHORTLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE FOR WRITING * ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post * ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Time, Esquire, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews * "Beautifully and insistently, Kolbert shows us that it is time to think radically about the ways we manage the environment."--Helen Macdonald, The New York Times
With a new afterword by the author
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.
In Under a White Sky, Elizabeth Kolbert takes a hard look at the new world we are creating. Along the way, she meets biologists 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.
JOEL SARTORE is a photographer, author, and 30-year contributor to National Geographic magazine, named 2018 National Geographic Explorer of the Year. Through his National Geographic Photo Ark project, he plans to photograph every species of animal under human care, an estimated 12,000. (As of Nov 2018, he has photographed nearly 9,000.) A three-part PBS/Nova special, Rare, featured his project in 2017. His Fundamentals of Photography is the best-selling offering of all The Great Courses, and he is a frequent guest on CBS Sunday Morning.
ELIZABETH KOLBERT (foreword) is a staff writer for The New Yorker. Her most recent book, The Sixth Extinction, received the Pulitzer Price for general nonfiction in 2015. She is also the author of Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change. A two-time National Magazine Award winner, Kolbert is a visiting fellow at the Center for Environmental Studies at Williams College.
ELIZABETH KOLBERT (foreword) is a staff writer for The New Yorker. Her most recent book, The Sixth Extinction, received the Pulitzer Price for general nonfiction in 2015. She is also the author of Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change. A two-time National Magazine Award winner, Kolbert is a visiting fellow at the Center for Environmental Studies at Williams College.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780593136287 |
| ISBN 10 | 0593136284 |
| Title | Under a White Sky |
| Author | Elizabeth Kolbert |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Random House USA Inc |
| Year published | 2022-04-05 |
| Number of pages | 272 |
| Prizes | Short-listed for James Cropper Wainwright Prize for Writing on Conservation 2021, Long-listed for Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction 2022, Long-listed for The Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize 2021 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |