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A review by brandonpytel
The Fragile Earth: Writing from the New Yorker on Climate Change by Henry Finder, David Remnick
5.0
What a fantastic collection of stories. In books of essays or short stories, I typically mark the pieces that stood out as outstanding in the table of contents, but for this book, each piece resonated so much that I had trouble distinguishing them. Even Bill McKibben’s End of Nature, which I’ve read several times, read just as good on a reread.
Divided into three sections — how we got here, where we are, and what we can do now — this book offers fantastic examinations of the climate emergency: its origins, its consequences, and the possibilities of mitigation and adaptation; or, in other words, its past, present, and future. Notably, the book brings to light the need for and importance of climate writing: “climate change isn’t an ‘issue’ to be considered among a list of others. Rather, it concerns the very preconditions for all species to go on living on this planet… [this book] contributes to a shared sense of urgency — and to a shared sense of change.”
Like I mentioned, every essay in this collection is worth reading, but here are some that stand out: “Writes in the Storm,” where Kathryn Schulz explains the history of weather as both an empirical model and a symbolic one, with the science of meteorology slowly replacing the literary impact of its majesty; “The Inferno,” where Christine Keneally describes Black Saturday, a tale of fighting one of Australia’s worst fires in history and the now-complicated implications of the country’s “stay or go” policy.
We also get a fantastic piece by Jonathan Franzen, “The End of the End of the World,” where the novelist goes to Antarctica to see a pristine landscape and a remote species, all within the frame of celebrating a relative’s memory and exploring the meaning of love within a dying world. And we get David Owen’s “Green Manhattan,” which dives into the eco-friendly lifestyle of urban spaces and made me rethink the preconceived notions of places like NYC as antitheses to environmental lifestyles and further enraged me on suburban sprawl and the modern American dream of mini-Monticellos, all made possible by the car and the infrastructure created to cater to it.
Divided into three sections — how we got here, where we are, and what we can do now — this book offers fantastic examinations of the climate emergency: its origins, its consequences, and the possibilities of mitigation and adaptation; or, in other words, its past, present, and future. Notably, the book brings to light the need for and importance of climate writing: “climate change isn’t an ‘issue’ to be considered among a list of others. Rather, it concerns the very preconditions for all species to go on living on this planet… [this book] contributes to a shared sense of urgency — and to a shared sense of change.”
Like I mentioned, every essay in this collection is worth reading, but here are some that stand out: “Writes in the Storm,” where Kathryn Schulz explains the history of weather as both an empirical model and a symbolic one, with the science of meteorology slowly replacing the literary impact of its majesty; “The Inferno,” where Christine Keneally describes Black Saturday, a tale of fighting one of Australia’s worst fires in history and the now-complicated implications of the country’s “stay or go” policy.
We also get a fantastic piece by Jonathan Franzen, “The End of the End of the World,” where the novelist goes to Antarctica to see a pristine landscape and a remote species, all within the frame of celebrating a relative’s memory and exploring the meaning of love within a dying world. And we get David Owen’s “Green Manhattan,” which dives into the eco-friendly lifestyle of urban spaces and made me rethink the preconceived notions of places like NYC as antitheses to environmental lifestyles and further enraged me on suburban sprawl and the modern American dream of mini-Monticellos, all made possible by the car and the infrastructure created to cater to it.