I kept to my goal of reading at least one non-fiction book a year - it's November, so I cut this one a bit close. Enter the latest Book Club pick: The World Without Us. It's full of interesting factoids (ceramic tiles would be the last marker of humanity) and fabulous thought projects. The (often insightful) observations of bonobo and chimpanzee behaviors when it comes to humans is equally captivating: "Murderous, mutual loathing between tribes was not more explicable, or complicated, than the genocidal urges of chimpanzees -- a fact of nature that we humans, vainly or disingenuously, pretend our codes of civilization transcend." My favourite passage comes early, and gives me some hope for our species: "bonobos, smaller and more slender than chimps but equally related to us, don't seem very aggressive at all. Although they defend their territory, no inter group killing had ever been observed. Their peaceful nature, predilection for playful sex with multiple partners, and apparent matriarchal social organization with all the attendant nurturing have practically become mythologized among those who insistently hope that the meek might yet inherit the Earth."The writing can be a bit dry at times and I'm always looking for more prosaic writing (more description, more colour, more adjectives), but Weisman is far more interested in sociology than poetry. The book promises to answer whether our planet would heave a great green sigh of relief at our disappearance or, perhaps, miss us as one of its black sheep children. There are no real answers; but, like Neo in the Matrix, it's the question that drives this entire work. I recommend the book for the cottage in the summer - surrounded by all that nature, one won't be able to help but feel a visceral connection that all humans, at their core, must feel for this blue and green marble we call home.
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