Synopses & Reviews
Coming home from the war in Iraq, US Army private Roy Scranton
thought he'd left the world of strife behind. Then he watched as new
calamities struck America, heralding a threat far more dangerous than
ISIS or Al Qaeda: Hurricane Katrina, Superstorm Sandy, megadrought — the
shock and awe of global warming.
Our world is changing. Rising seas, spiking temperatures, and
extreme weather imperil global infrastructure, crops, and water
supplies. Conflict, famine, plagues, and riots menace from every
quarter. From war-stricken Baghdad to the melting Arctic, human-caused
climate change poses a danger not only to political and economic
stability, but to civilization itself... and to what it means to be
human. Our greatest enemy, it turns out, is ourselves. The warmer,
wetter, more chaotic world we now live in — the Anthropocene — demands a
radical new vision of human life.
In this bracing response to climate change, Roy Scranton combines
memoir, reportage, philosophy, and Zen wisdom to explore what it means
to be human in a rapidly evolving world, taking readers on a journey
through street protests, the latest findings of earth scientists, a
historic UN summit, millennia of geological history, and the persistent
vitality of ancient literature. Expanding on his influential New York Times essay (the #1 most-emailed article the day it appeared, and selected for Best American Science and Nature Writing 2014),
Scranton responds to the existential problem of global warming by
arguing that in order to survive, we must come to terms with our
mortality.
Plato argued that to philosophize is to learn to die. If that's
true, says Scranton, then we have entered humanity's most philosophical
age — for this is precisely the problem of the Anthropocene. The trouble
now is that we must learn to die not as individuals, but as a
civilization.
War veteran, journalist, author, and Princeton PhD candidate Roy Scranton has written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Rolling Stone, Boston Review, and Theory and Event, and has been interviewed on NPR's Fresh Air, among other media.
Review
"Roy Scranton lucidly articulates the depth of the climate crisis with
an honesty that is all too rare, then calls for a reimagined humanism
that will help us meet our stormy future with as much decency as we can
muster. While I don't share his conclusions about the potential for
social movements to drive ambitious mitigation, this is a wise and
important challenge from an elegant writer and original thinker. A
critical intervention." Naomi Klein, author of This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate
Review
"In Learning to Die in the Anthropocene, Roy Scranton draws on
his experiences in Iraq to confront the grim realities of climate
change. The result is a fierce and provocative book." Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History
Review
"An eloquent, ambitious, and provocative book." Rob Nixon, author of Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor
Review
"We're f*cked. We know it. Kind of. But Roy Scranton in this blistering
new book goes down to the darkness, looks hard and doesn't blink. He
even brings back a few, hard-earned slivers of light. . . . What is
philosophy? It's time comprehended in thought. This is our time and Roy
Scranton has had the courage to think it in prose that sometimes feels
more like bullets than bullet points." Simon Critchley, Editor of The NY Times blog "The Stone."
Review
"Roy Scranton gets it. He knows in his bones that this civilization is
over. He knows it is high time to start again the human dance of making
some other way to live. In his distinctive and original way he works
though a common cultural inheritance, making it something fresh and new
for these all too interesting times. This compressed, essential text
offers both uncomfortable truths and unexpected joy." McKenzie Wark, author of Molecular Red: Theory for the Anthropocene
Synopsis
An Iraq War vet's bracing, visionary response to the challenge posed by global warming and his hope in the humanities.
About the Author
A war veteran, journalist, author, and Princeton PhD candidate, Roy Scranton has published in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Rolling Stone, Boston Review, and Theory and Event, and has been interviewed on NPR's Fresh Air, among other media.