The world as we knew it : dispatches from a changing climate /

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Nineteen leading literary writers from around the globe offer timely, haunting first-person reflections on how climate change has altered their lives--including essays by Lydia Millet, Alexandra Kleeman, Kim Stanley Robinson, Omar El Akkad, Lidia Yuknavitch, Melissa Febos, and more

In this riveting anthology, leading literary writers reflect on how climate change has altered their lives, revealing the personal and haunting consequences of this global threat.

In the opening essay, National Book Award finalist Lydia Millet mourns the end of the Saguaro cacti in her Arizona backyard due to drought. Later, Omar El Akkad contemplates how the rise of temperatures in the Middle East is destroying his home and the wellspring of his art. Gabrielle Bellot reflects on how a bizarre lionfish invasion devastated the coral reef near her home in the Caribbean--a precursor to even stranger events to come. Traveling through Nebraska, Terese Svoboda witnesses cougars running across highways and showing up in kindergartens.

As the stories unfold--from Antarctica to Australia, New Hampshire to New York--an intimate portrait of a climate-changed world emerges, captured by writers whose lives jostle against incongruous memories of familiar places that have been transformed in startling ways.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Introduction (p. xi)
• From This Valley, They Say, You Are Leaving (p. 3)
• Starshift (p. 13)
• A Brief History of Breathing (p. 31)
• What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Antarctica (p. 39)
• Iowa Bestiary (p. 53)
• How Do You Live with Displacement? (p. 65)
• Faster Than We Thought (p. 87)
• Unearthing (p. 93)
• Leap (p. 111)
• Come Hell (p. 125)
• After the Storm (p. 133)
• Walking on Water (p. 143)
• Mobbing Call (p. 163)
• Moments of Being (p. 171)
• Until This Snow Reaches the Ocean (p. 185)
• Season of Sickness (p. 197)
• The Development (p. 211)
• Cougar (p. 225)
• Signs and Wonders (p. 235)
• Acknowledgments (p. 255)
• Text Permissions (p. 257)
• About the Contributors (p. 259)
• About the Editors (p. 267)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Nineteen essays on climate change from established writers (including Omar El Akkad, Rachel Riederer, and Kim Stanley Robinson) are gathered in this inspiring collection by Brady, executive editor of Orion magazine, and Isen, editor in chief of Catapult magazine. The contributions range widely, but most focus on regional climate conditions during the past few decades, including prolonged droughts in Arizona; invasive fish in Dominican waters; air pollution in Bangkok; a melting glacier in the Antarctic; and devastation caused by increasingly powerful hurricanes. Other essays detail the plight of impoverished people as temperatures climb; the spread of tick-borne diseases in the United States; Ugandan sacred lands lost to a hydroelectric project; the moral choice of whether to have kids in these times; the shifting of the California monsoon; and anticipation of the flooding of Florida. The final essay, by Australian novelist Delia Falconer, registers surreal "signs and wonders," reported by the media piecemeal, as human-caused disruptions of our biosphere. VERDICT These personal testimonies detail the effects of climate change on the writers and their communities now. Concerned readers may be inspired to take action.--David R. Conn

Publishers Weekly Review

Brady, the executive director of Orion magazine, and Catapult editor Isen bring together in this powerful collection 19 essays on the climate crisis. In "What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Antarctica," Elizabeth Rush describes researching a trip to Antarctica with the National Science Foundation, and reading other writers' accounts of the frozen continent. Beyond the frequent language of conquering and pioneering, she finds that "what remains is what the ice demands: that we work together in order to survive." In "How Do You Live with Displacement," Emily Raboteau compiles a diary of the first three months of 2020, each entry a chronicle of what "people in my network said about what they were losing," and in "After the Storm," Mary Annaïse Heglar spotlights the link between escalating natural disasters and racial inequality in the United States as she recalls visiting a Hurricane Katrina--ravaged South. The pieces create a moving mix of resolve and sorrow, painting a vivid picture of an era in which "climate change is altering life on Earth at an unprecedented rate," but "the majority of us can still remember when things were more stable." The result is a poignant ode to a changing planet. (June)

Kirkus Book Review

Prominent writers reflect on the personal impact of climate change. In focusing on how climatic shifts have been felt, mourned, and protested, this essay collection, edited by Brady and Isen, sketches an ecological transition point for humanity: a moment when older adults can recall a more secure past but not avoid confronting an increasingly ominous and insecure future. In "Faster Than We Thought," Omar El Akkad offers a poignant consideration of how the Qatar of his youth is steadily becoming both unrecognizable and uninhabitable: "Sometime within the next century, stories of life in this place--the stories that constitute almost the entirety of my childhood--will sound, to new generations, like fiction. The tether between what is and what used to be, constantly stretching under the weight of history and progress, will not stretch any more. It will snap." These essays investigate the myriad consequences of fast-developing, dramatic events, such as massive floods or powerful storms, and slower, more mundane happenings, such as incursions by invasive species and the gradual loss of land to rising sea levels. As the contributors make frighteningly clear, all these phenomena presage enormous challenges for life on Earth. Among the most powerful pieces are those that consider the intersection of scientific and spiritual assessments of climate change, as in Lacy M. Johnson's "Come Hell," a contemplation of how Christians in American farm country have reckoned with extreme and unpredictable weather; Rachel Riederer's "Walking on Water," which probes Indigenous responses to the construction of a giant dam, and the alarming disruptions to neighboring ecosystems, in Uganda; and Delia Falconer's "Signs and Wonders," an exploration of the complex dynamics of imaginative reactions to a biological apocalypse around the globe. Though there is a tilt toward American perspectives and many of the writers have a connection to New York City, overall, the book presents a diverse portrait of environmental awareness and distress. A collection of testimonials, by turns disheartening and inspiring, on the radical climate transformations now well underway. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Amy Brady is the executive director of Orion. She is also the author of a cultural history of ice in America and the former editor in chief of the Chicago Review of Books. Her writing and research have won awards from the National Science Foundation, the Bread Loaf Environmental Writers' Conference and the Library of Congress.
Tajja Isen is the author of Some of My Best Friends: Essays on Lip Service. She is the editor in chief of Catapult magazine and the former digital editor at The Walrus. Also a voice actor, Tajja can be heard on such animated shows as The Berenstain Bears, Atomic Betty, and Go, Dog. Go!, among others.