If there was one book I’d give to my entire gift list for Christmas this year (coming up in 10 days) this would be the one. Climate change in my correct opinion is the number one issue facing the world today. Hands down. That said, this book is almost rather extreme I think, as do countless reviewers. Wallace-Wells calls himself an “alarmist” so what would one expect reading a book by him? It’s not for sissies.

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The Uninhabitable Earth:
Life After Warming
by David Wallace-Wells
2019 / 299 pp
read by author 8h 33m
rating – 9.75 / nonfiction
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At just under 300 pages, it’s not a long book but it attempts to do what other books on the subject have somehow avoided – comprehensively outline the overall effects of global warming and climate change on people. What will it look like and how will we survive?

The rather hyperbolic-seeming Introduction is not kidding. The bulk of the narrative gets right down to the nitty gritty with facts and figures and specific information using the worst evidence he could find I think, but because the scope is wide, the depth is never too complex for the layman.

The author has taken pains to organize the material carefully for relatively ease of understanding. It covers everything from heat, water, fire and hunger to economics, technology and politics as well as a kind of aftermath in places. But Wallace-Wells tells us he is not a pessimist; there may be a way out.

Yeah? After the last chapters I’m not so sure he really believes that.