We are pleased to continue our Distinguished Lecture Series with virtual talks this season. Alan Weisman, author of Countdown: Our Last, Best Hope for a Future on Earth? and The World Without Us, will be the featured speaker on Sunday, February 21, 2021 at 4:00 p.m.
The lecture will take place via Zoom. Click here to join the meeting.
In his bestselling book The World Without Us, Alan Weisman considered how the Earth could heal and even refill empty niches if relieved of humanity’s constant pressures. Behind that groundbreaking thought experiment was his hope that we would be inspired to find a way to add humans back to this vision of a restored, healthy planet-only in harmony, not mortal combat, with the rest of nature.
But with a million more of us every 4 1/2 days on a planet that’s not getting any bigger, and with our exhaust overheating the atmosphere and altering the chemistry of the oceans, prospects for a sustainable human future seem ever more in doubt. For this long awaited follow-up book, Weisman traveled to more than 20 countries to ask what experts agreed were probably the most important questions on Earth — and also the hardest: How many humans can the planet hold without capsizing? How robust must the Earth’s ecosystem be to assure our continued existence? Can we know which other species are essential to our survival? And, how might we actually arrive at a stable, optimum population, and design an economy to allow genuine prosperity without endless growth?
Weisman visits an extraordinary range of the world’s cultures, religions, nationalities, tribes, and political systems to learn what in their beliefs, histories, liturgies, or current circumstances might suggest that sometimes it’s in their own best interest to limit their growth. The result is a landmark work of reporting: devastating, urgent, and, ultimately, deeply hopeful.
By vividly detailing the burgeoning effects of our cumulative presence, Countdown reveals what may be the fastest, most acceptable, practical, and affordable way of returning our planet and our presence on it to balance. Weisman again shows that he is one of the most provocative journalists at work today, with a book whose message is so compelling that it will change how we see our lives and our destiny.
Alan Weisman is the author of several books, including The World Without Us, which is a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist, winner of the Wenjin Book Prize of the National Library of China, and an international bestseller translated in 34 languages.
Countdown was awarded the 2014 Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the 2013 Paris Book Festival Prize for nonfiction, the 2014 Nautilus Gold Book Award, the Population Institute’s 2014 Global Media Award for best book, and was a finalist for the Orion Book Award and the Books for a Better Life Award.
His work has been selected for many anthologies, including Best American Science Writing. An award-winning journalist, his reports have appeared in Harper’s, the New York Times Magazine, the Atlantic Monthly, Discover, Vanity Fair, Wilson Quarterly, Mother Jones, and Orion, and on NPR.
A former contributing editor to the Los Angeles Times Magazine, Weisman is a senior radio producer for Homelands Productions. He lives in western Massachusetts.
Now in its 14th season, the Distinguished Lecture Series is organized and hosted by Dr. Jeremy Yudkin. Dr. Yudkin is a resident of the Berkshires and professor of music at Boston University and Oxford University. Every summer at the Lenox Library he presents the pre-concert lectures for the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s Tanglewood season.
All programs in the Distinguished Lecture Series are FREE and open to the public thanks to the generosity of the speakers and donors like you. In addition, we are grateful to the Lenox Library Association for its sponsorship of Zoom, which makes these programs possible.