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Dispatches From a Changing Climate
by Amy Brady, Tajja Isen
Nineteen leading literary writers from around the globe offer timely, haunting first-person reflections on how climate change has altered their lives—including essays by Lydia Millet, Alexandra Kleeman, Kim Stanley Robinson, Omar El Akkad, Lidia Yuknavitch, Melissa Febos, and more.
In this riveting anthology, leading literary writers reflect on how climate change has altered their lives, revealing the personal and haunting consequences of this global threat.
In the opening essay, National Book Award finalist Lydia Millet mourns the end of the Saguaro cacti in her Arizona backyard due to drought. Later, Omar El Akkad contemplates how the rise of temperatures in the Middle East is destroying his home and the wellspring of his art. Gabrielle Bellot reflects on how a bizarre lionfish invasion devastated the coral reef near her home in the Caribbean—a precursor to even stranger events to come. Traveling through Nebraska, Terese Svoboda witnesses cougars running across highways and showing up in kindergartens.
As the stories unfold—from Antarctica to Australia, New Hampshire to New York—an intimate portrait of a climate-changed world emerges, captured by writers whose lives jostle against incongruous memories of familiar places that have been transformed in startling ways.
"Brady, the executive director of Orion magazine, and Catapult editor Isen bring together in this powerful collection 19 essays on the climate crisis... The result is a poignant ode to a changing planet." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"A collection of testimonials, by turns disheartening and inspiring, on the radical climate transformations now well underway." - Kirkus Reviews
"These personal testimonies detail the effects of climate change on the writers and their communities now. Concerned readers may be inspired to take action." - Library Journal
"Striking...A startling collection of 19 essays documenting the impact of climate change at the individual level, by a geographically diverse group of writers." - Shelf Awareness
"From the desert of Arizona to the waters of Dominica and the Nile, from the glaciers of Antarctica to the streets of Bangkok and New Orleans, The World As We Knew It: Dispatches from a Changing Climate is a dazzling and terrifying array of real-life parables about the way the changing climate is changing our lives. These brilliant thinkers and futurists boldly share their fears, and, perhaps even more daringly, their hopes. Part diary of apocalypse, part celebration of all the small beauties under threat, The World As We Knew It is essential reading." - Helen Phillips, author of The Need
"Spanning the globe, from Antarctica to Qatar to Queensland, The World As We Knew It sometimes has the stark, clear sound of a fire lookout announcing flames, and in other moments, it has the intimate pace of a journal. We need both these registers and more, this important book reveals: clarity in urgency, depth in observation, if we stand a chance at making sense of the gargantuan changes we set in motion and our living through as a species." - John Freeman, author of The Park and editor of Tales of Two Planets
This information about The World As We Knew It was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Tajja Isen is the author of Some of My Best Friends: Essays on Lip Service. She is an editor for Catapult Magazine and the former digital editor at The Walrus. Also a voice actor, Tajja can be heard on such animated shows as The Berenstain Bears, Atomic Betty, and Go Dog Go, among others.
Amy Brady is the Executive Director of Orion. She is also the author of a cultural history of ice in America and the former Editor-in-Chief of the Chicago Review of Books. She holds a PhD in literature from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and has won writing and research awards from the National Science Foundation, the Bread Loaf Environmental Writers Conference, and the Library of Congress.
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