Starred review from January 1, 2024
Jabr, a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine, explores how the living world shaped the planet--filling the atmosphere with oxygen and turning rocky ground into dynamic soil. He also addresses the human role in creating a living world--and a threatened one--introducing figures trying to fight climate change. Prepub Alert.
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April 1, 2024
Science journalist Jabr debuts with an enlightening examination of how living organisms have influenced their environments. According to Jabr, mammoths likely helped permafrost, and the carbon sequestered therein, stay frozen by digging it out from under “heat-trapping layers of snow” while rummaging for food. The arrival of land plants produced enough oxygen to thicken the ozone, which provided protection from ultraviolet radiation and enabled the emergence of the first terrestrial animals. Microbes have had a massive impact on the planet, Jabr contends, describing how ocean-dwelling microorganisms possibly “helped create the continents” by producing wet clay that “effectively lubricat” the ocean crust, promoting the process by which rock slips into the Earth’s mantle, melts into magma, gets expelled by volcanoes, and then solidifies as new land. Lamenting humanity’s outsized ecological footprint, Jabr notes how homo sapiens have acidified the oceans, stymied fire’s role in regulating forest ecosystems, and generated vast amounts of plastics that are killing wildlife. The science highlights the complex ways in which the planet has been shaped by its inhabitants, and Jabr’s sobering look at the harm wrought by humans finds some hope amid the gloom, suggesting that innovating carbon capture technology and cultivating oceanic kelp forests constitute promising strategies for sequestering atmospheric carbon. The result is an edifying and holistic view of life on Earth.
April 1, 2024
Life most definitely finds a way. Jabr's survey of current Earth science is a masterwork of journalism--exhaustively researched, wide-ranging, simultaneously intricate in detail and accessible to general readers. The theme is profound: Life does not simply exist on Earth; it is Earth. "Life gives our planet an anatomy and physiology--breath, pulse, and metabolism," writes the author. "Without the transformations wrought by life over billions of years, Earth would be utterly unrecognizable." From microbes to whales, notes Jabr, life orchestrates its own environment, often equaling or exceeding the geologic powers of volcanoes, glaciers, and earthquakes. A contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine and Scientific American, among other publications, the author persuasively demonstrates that over billion-year time frames, life has sculpted continents and transfigured the oceans and atmosphere. While the Earth itself is not doomed to extinction--it has an eons-long history of recovering from a wide variety of calamities--a great many species (including our own) are at grave risk. The culprit, irrefutably, is accelerating climate change caused by human activity, specifically our dependence on fossil fuels. These warnings are nothing new, but the scope of the evidence Jabr brings to the table is revelatory. While working on the book, he interacted with scores of scientists to investigate innovative solutions as numerous as the ecological crises they address. However, none are sufficient without weaning our civilization off oil and natural gas. This book will revolutionize readers' concepts of the fundamental interdependency of life, air, and soil. With the curiosity of a reporter, the mind of a scientist, and the lyricism of a poet, Jabr explores the extraordinary tapestry of life, not least the ecological diversity of his own backyard, where he and his partner created "a biodiverse, carbon-storing wildlife habitat adapted to a rap-idly shifting climate." Popular science writing at its very best.
COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Starred review from June 1, 2024
Jabr, contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and Scientific American, delivers a beautifully written, exquisitely detailed, and finely researched examination of life and its symbiotic relationship with Earth. The book is divided into three parts. "Rock" begins with ""intraterrestrials"" in a fascinating look at mysterious and largely unstudied life forms that exist within the depths of our planet. Jabr also delves into the relationship between landmasses and mammals and provides a fresh perspective on soil and dirt. In "Water," Jabr captivates readers with an overview of plankton and marine vegetation while underscoring the problems engendered by the proliferation of plastic waste in our oceans. So prevalent is plastic on the planet, Jabr writes, that plastiglomerate, a new type of rock composed partially of plastic, may mark the Anthropocene era. "Air" is an assessment of our atmosphere, fire, and greenhouse-gas emissions. Throughout the book, Jabr focuses on the expanse of earth's history and the multiple cycles of new life, mass extinctions, land formation, and ice ages that shape and balance life today. Going forward, Jabr warns, with pollution of various forms disrupting planetary natural cycles and the rhythms of life, Earth's climate will become progressively more unpredictable, making our future and the future of all life on Earth increasingly uncertain.
COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.