The World as We Knew It: Dispatches from a Changing Climate

Nineteen essays on climate change from established writers (including Omar El Akkad, Rachel Riederer, and Kim Stanley Robinson) are gathered in this inspiring collection by Brady, executive editor of Orion magazine, and Isen, editor in chief of Catapult magazine. The contributions range widely, but most focus on regional climate conditions during the past few decades, including prolonged droughts in Arizona; invasive fish in Dominican waters; air pollution in Bangkok; a melting glacier in the Antarctic; and devastation caused by increasingly powerful hurricanes. Other essays detail the plight of impoverished people as temperatures climb; the spread of tick-borne diseases in the United States; Ugandan sacred lands lost to a hydroelectric project; the moral choice of whether to have kids in these times; the shifting of the California monsoon; and anticipation of the flooding of Florida. The final essay, by Australian novelist Delia Falconer, registers surreal “signs and wonders,” reported by the media piecemeal, as human-caused disruptions of our biosphere.