Description

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New Yorker Best Book of the Year

“Exquisite.”—DAVID WALLACE-WELLS “At once an elegy and an exhortation.”—ELIZABETH KOLBERT “A book that goes deeper than any before into the meaning of the climate breakdown for all the rest of creation.”—BILL McKIBBEN “Celebratory and heartbreaking.”—DAVID GEORGE HASKELL

A revelatory exploration of climate change from the perspective of wild species and natural ecosystems--an homage to the miraculous, vibrant entity that is life on Earth.

The stories we usually tell ourselves about climate change tend to focus on the damage inflicted on human societies by big storms, severe droughts, and rising sea levels. But the most powerful impacts are being and will be felt by the natural world and its myriad species, which are already in the midst of the sixth great extinction. Rising temperatures are fracturing ecosystems that took millions of years to evolve, disrupting the life forms they sustain--and in many cases driving them towards extinction. The natural Eden that humanity inherited is quickly slipping away.

Although we can never really know what a creature thinks or feels, The End of Eden invites the reader to meet wild species on their own terms in a range of ecosystems that span the globe. Combining classic natural history, firsthand reportage, and insights from cutting-edge research, Adam Welz brings us close to creatures like moose in northern Maine, parrots in Puerto Rico, cheetahs in Namibia, and rare fish in Australia as they struggle to survive. The stories are intimate yet expansive and always dramatic.

An exquisitely written and deeply researched exploration of wild species reacting to climate breakdown, The End of Eden offers a radical new kind of environmental journalism that connects humans to nature in a more empathetic way than ever before and galvanizes us to act in defense of the natural world before it’s too late.

About the Author

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Adam Welz is an enthusiastic naturalist and widely traveled environmental writer, photographer, and filmmaker. His work has appeared in The Guardian, Yale Environment 360, The Atlantic, Ensia, and many other outlets worldwide. He's a recipient of a Middlebury Fellowship in Environmental Journalism and currently lives in Cape Town with his wife, Sarah, and triplet daughters. @adamwelz @adamwelz.wild

Praise For…

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"Welz’s elegy for the natural world will leave you marveling at the intricacies of animal adaptations over millenniums of evolution even as you mourn their rapid loss in the face of human culture." —The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice)

"Welz’s study, which he conceived as an attempt to examine such disruptions ‘without turning myself to stone,’ amounts to a haunting warning." —The New Yorker

"A book that fundamentally changes us as we read . . . Welz expertly weaves together a climate-breakdown education that combines objective scientific discourse with empathetic accounts of the lives and deaths of plants and animals across the globe." —Washington Independent Review of Books

“Eye-opening … A poignant elegy for creatures lost to climate change and a rigorous call to arms against further devastation.” —Kirkus Reviews

“[A] beautifully rendered tour of a natural world on the brink.” —Publishers Weekly

"A climate change book for everyone . . . The insight and passion found in this book might help push us to really grasp and address climate breakdown." —Apple Books

“The world is not ours alone, and it's not only humans who suffer from our warping and degrading of it. Everything is changing now-a global transformation of horrible majesty. In his exquisite meditation, Adam Welz shows us how to see it-and feel it- in full.” —David Wallace-Wells, author of THE UNINHABITABLE EARTH

“Climate change, Adam Welz shows, is already pushing many creatures toward oblivion, and its impacts are only going to grow. The End of Eden is at once an elegy and an exhortation-a plea to save what's left of the Earth's magnificent diversity.” —Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of UNDER A WHITE SKY

“A book both celebratory and heartbreaking, Adam Welz revels in the marvels of life's diversity and delivers a devastating account of ecological crisis. He brings climate breakdown's effects on the more-than-human world to vivid life, revealing in the process the interconnectedness of all species.” —David George Haskell, author of Pulitzer Prize finalist SOUNDS WILD AND BROKEN

“One of the great tricks the fossil fuel industry has pulled off in the last century is convincing the American public that 'nature' is something over there, separate from us. It is there only for us to extract value from, and thus respecting or wanting to protect nature, especially at the cost of profit, is something only out-of-touch elitists would do. Adam Welz blows this deeply entrenched narrative to pieces in a book that is as rigorously reported as it is beautifully written and, somehow, hopeful.” —Amy Westervelt, host of Drilled

“Adam Welz is a first-class observer of the natural world, usually found with binoculars around his neck. He's also a first-class reporter on the science of our environmental predicaments. Together, these traits have allowed him to produce a book that goes deeper than any before into the meaning of the climate breakdown for all the rest of creation that shares this planet uneasily with us.” —Bill McKibben

“Adam Welz has thrown a wonderfully wide net over the natural world, from birds to corals to mammals, in Europe, North America and Australia, to portray the array of life at risk in a rapidly warming world. He evokes wonder, which may well be the last arrow we have in the quiver to convince us to change our course.” —Jim Robbins, New York Times correspondent and author of THE WONDER OF BIRDS

“An eloquent, deeply informed account of the unfolding consequences of the climate crisis for all life on Earth.” —Michelle Nijhuis, author of BELOVED BEASTS: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction

“More than six decades after Silent Spring exposed the harms of chemical pesticides, Welz has written a Rachel Carson-esque account of a human-caused global force that threatens the future of all wild creatures.” —Ben Goldfarb, author of CROSSINGS and EAGER: