Under a White Sky

The Nature of the Future

Elizabeth Kolbert

$32.99

Paperback

Not in-store but you can order this
How long will it take?

Availability Information

We source books from suppliers in Australia and overseas. For books we don't currently have in stock, the time it takes to get them from our suppliers can vary widely - from a few days to a few months - so we check each book with each supplier to determine the expected time it will take to be supplied to us.

We then advise you accordingly. If the time taken to get any book is too long for you, you can let us know and we will cancel or adjust your order, and refund as required.

To find out the anticipated arrival time for specific items prior to ordering, please contact us by phone or email:

Phone +61 2 9264 3111, or 1800 4 BOOKS (1800 4 26657) if outside Sydney:
option 1 Abbey's Bookshop (Crime, History, Science, Kids & more) • info@abbeys.com.au
option 2 Language Book Centre (ESL & Foreign Languages) • language@abbeys.com.au
option 3 Galaxy Bookshop (Sci-fi, Fantasy, Romance, Graphic Novels) • sf@galaxybooks.com.au

QTY:

English

Bodley Head
02 March 2021

Mathematics & Sciences; Evolution; Pollution & threats to the environment; Social impact of environmental issues; Genetic engineering; Environmental science, engineering & technology

The author of the international bestseller 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?

'Important, necessary, urgent and phenomenally interesting' HELEN MACDONALD, New York Times

ONE OF THE SUNDAY TIMES 'BOOKS OF 2021'

The author of the international bestseller 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?

Elizabeth Kolbert has become one of the most important writers on the environment. Now she investigates the immense challenges humanity faces as we scramble to reverse, in a matter of decades, the effects we've had on the atmosphere, the oceans, the world's forests and rivers - on the very topography of the globe.

In Under a White Sky, she 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 desert; 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, changing the sky from blue to white. One way to look at human civilisation, 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 imperilled 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.

By: Elizabeth Kolbert
Imprint: Bodley Head
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 216mm, Width: 135mm, Spine: 19mm
Weight: 257g
ISBN: 9781847925459
ISBN 10: 1847925456
Pages: 288
Publication Date: 02 March 2021
Audience: General/trade , College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , ELT Advanced , Primary
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Elizabeth Kolbert is the author of the international bestseller The Sixth Extinction, for which she won the Pulitzer Prize, and Field Notes from a Catastrophe- Man, Nature, and Climate Change. She has been a staff writer at the New Yorker since 1999, and has been awarded the Blake-Dodd Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She lives in Williamstown, Massachusetts, with her husband and children.

Reviews for Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future

One of the great science journalists, Kolbert has for many years been an essential voice, a reporter from the front lines of the environmental crisis... Important, necessary, urgent and phenomenally interesting... Beautifully and insistently, Kolbert shows us that it is time to think radically about the ways we manage the environment; time to work with what we have, using the knowledge we have, with our eyes fully open to the realities of where we are -- HELEN MACDONALD * New York Times * Riveting... inspiring... the premier chronicler of humanity's thoughtless destruction of our habitat * Washington Post * Kolbert's prose is peppered with...mordant observations, which bring out the humanity (or animality) in her subjects -- Ben Cooke * The Times * This intimate natural history is both a sober assessment of the ecosystems we have harmed and an exciting description of some of the discoveries that could help undo that damage * Scientific American * Brilliantly executed and urgently necessary * Publishers Weekly *