David Biello: The Unnatural World

Advance copy: Backstories on books by NASW members

Cover: Unnatural World

THE UNNATURAL WORLD:
THE RACE TO REMAKE CIVILIZATION IN EARTH'S NEWEST AGE
David Biello
Scribner, November 15, 2016, $26
ISBN-10: 1476743908; ISBN-13: 978-1476743905

Biello writes:

A little more than a decade ago, I stumbled across my first mention of a whole new geologic epoch. It's not every day that a new Holocene or Pleistocene pops into existence, and that's what I thought when I heard the term Anthropocene for the first time.

Soon I was interviewing Jan Zalasiewicz, now head of the group of scientists charged by stratigraphers with making a formal proposal for this new epoch. The word, while clearly jargon and anthropocentric, seemed to capture something new about the never-ending human struggle with our environment that I had been covering since the waning years of the 20th century.

David Biello

I felt that this resurrected geologic idea might be just the lens to examine the disparate strands of human nature's impact on the world, whether that be climate change or the gathering force of a mass extinction.

Thus began a reporting odyssey that took me from Leicester in England to the coast of Shandong Province in China, and everywhere in between, all to chart the geologic impacts of humanity, and write about them. We humans are now a planetary force, akin to the great glaciers of the Pleistocene or an era-ending asteroid. The only difference is that we have the ability to make choices about this new "unnatural" world we are manufacturing, mostly unconsciously, to date.

It took years to write and research the book, and I wish I could have had the luxury of geologic time to complete it. A book on a topic this big becomes more about what to leave out than what to put in. I regret having to cull things like the nature of rivers in this new epoch, or the ins and outs of scientific politics in geology. Even in a project of book length, there isn't room for every fascinating story or intriguing tidbit.

Perhaps more importantly, things that are interesting to a writer after deep immersion in a subject may be of less interest to the average reader, or the editor. I'll carry that lesson with me into some future book project in a bid to prevent sprawl.

Contact info:

David Biello, 917-723-1838, dbiello@gmail.com, Twitter: @dbiello, Skype: david.biello, Website: https://davidbiello.com/
Publicist: Jessica Yu, 212-632-4952, jessica.yu@simonandschuster.com
Agent: Ethan Bassoff, 212-352-2055, ethan@lmqlit.com

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Advance Copy

The path from idea to book may take myriad routes. The Advance Copy column, started in 2000 by NASW volunteer book editor Lynne Lamberg, features NASW authors telling the stories behind their books. Authors are asked to report how they got their idea, honed it into a proposal, found an agent and a publisher, funded and conducted their research, and organized their writing process. They also are asked to share what they wish they’d known when they started or would do differently next time, and what advice they can offer aspiring authors. Lamberg edits the authors’ answers to produce the Advance Copy reports.

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