Adventures in the Anthropocene: A Journey to the Heart of the Planet we Made

Description

** Winner of Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books 2015 ** We live in epoch-making times. The changes we humans have made in recent decades have altered our world beyond anything it has experienced in its 4.6 billion-year history. As a result, our planet is said to be crossing into the Anthropocene - the Age of Humans. Gaia Vince decided to travel the world at the start of this new age to see what life is really like for the people on the frontline of the planet we've made. From artificial glaciers in the Himalayas to painted mountains in Peru, electrified reefs in the Maldives to garbage islands in the Caribbean, Gaia found people doing the most extraordinary things to solve the problems that we ourselves have created. These stories show what the Anthropocene means for all of us - and they illuminate how we might engineer Earth for our future.

Gaia Vince is a journalist and broadcaster specialising in science and the environment. She has been the front editor of the journal Nature Climate Change, the news editor of Nature and online editor of New Scientist. Her book Adventures in the Anthropocene: A Journey to the Heart of the Planet we Made won the 2015 Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books. Her work has appeared in the Guardian, The Times, Science, Scientific American, Australian Geographic and the Australian. She has a regular column, Smart Planet, on BBC Online, and devises and presents programmes about the Anthropocene for BBC radio. She blogs at WanderingGaia.com and tweets at @WanderingGaia.

"A heroic and important work " -- Bryan Appleyard * Sunday Times * "An excellent book... Vince writes with great freshness and vigour, and her stories are hard to stop reading" * Daily Telegraph * "It holds a mirror up to humanity and says: look what you have done to the world, the only world you will ever have... in every sense a good book, as well as a compelling read" * Guardian * "A masterpiece... a wondrous, remarkable, but heart-rending story" * Ecologist * "A masterpiece... a wondrous, remarkable, but heart-rending story" * Ecologist * "A story of optimism about how 10 billion people can in future live together and prosper... Fresh and unencumbered, Vince glides from ecology to economics, politics to philosophy, seeing it all through the people she meets" * New Scientist *