Footprints: In Search of Future Fossils
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- Synopsis
- What will the world look like in ten thousand years--or ten million? What kinds of stories will it tell about us? In Footprints, David Farrier surveys the traces we will leave for people of the very distant future. Modern civilization has created objects and landscapes with the potential to endure through deep time, including the plastic polluting the oceans, the nuclear waste entombed within the earth, and the thirty million miles of paved roads spanning the planet. Our carbon could linger in the atmosphere for a hundred thousand years, and the remains of our cities will persist millions of years from now as a layer in the rock. These future fossils have the potential to reveal much about how we lived in the twenty-first century. Crossing the boundaries of literature, art, and science, Footprints is a profound meditation on climate change and the Anthropocene, and an urgent search for the fossils--industrial, chemical, geological--that humans are leaving behind. Traveling from the Baltic Sea to the Great Barrier Reef, and from an ice core laboratory in Tasmania to Shanghai, one of the world's biggest cities, Farrier describes a planet that is changing rapidly, with consequences beyond the scope of human understanding. How do we want to be remembered in the myths and stories of our distant descendants? As much a message of hope as a warning, Footprints will change not only how you think about the future but also how you see the world today. DAVID FARRIER teaches at the University of Edinburgh. In 2017, Footprints won the Royal Society of Literature s Giles St. Aubyn Award for first commissioned work of nonfiction. He lives in Edinburgh.
- Copyright:
- 2020
Book Details
- Book Quality:
- Excellent
- Book Size:
- 309 Pages
- ISBN-13:
- 9780374157333
- Publisher:
- Farrar, Straus & Giroux
- Date of Addition:
- 06/30/21
- Copyrighted By:
- David Farrier
- Adult content:
- No
- Language:
- English
- Has Image Descriptions:
- No
- Categories:
- Nonfiction, Science
- Submitted By:
- Evan Reese
- Proofread By:
- Lori C.
- Usage Restrictions:
- This is a copyrighted book.