Field Notes From a Catastrophe: Man, Nature and Climate Change

Elizabeth Kolbert

Mar 2006 · Simon and Schuster · Narrated by Hope Davis

About this audiobook

Americans have been warned since the late 1970s that the buildup of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere threatens to melt the polar ice sheets and irreversibly change our climate. With little done since then to alter this dangerous path, the world has reached a critical threshold. By the end of the century, it will likely be hotter than at any point in the last two million years, and the sweeping consequences of this change will determine the future of life on earth for generations to come.

Taking listeners from the melting Alaskan permafrost to storm-torn New Orleans, acclaimed journalist Elizabeth Kolbert approaches this monumental problem from every angle. She interviews researchers and environmentalists, explains the science, draws frightening parallels to lost civilizations and presents the moving tales of people who are watching their worlds disappear. Growing out of an award-winning three-part series for the New Yorker, Field Notes from a Catastrophe brings the environment into the consciousness of the American people and asks what, if anything, can be done to save our planet.

About the author

Elizabeth Kolbert is the author of Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change and The Sixth Extinction, for which she won the Pulitzer Prize. She has also been awarded two National Magazine Awards for her writing at The New Yorker, where she has been a staff writer since 1999, and the Blake-Dodd Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She lives in Williamstown, Massachusetts, with her husband and children.

Hope Davis' filmography includes The Matador, The Weather Man, Proof, Dumas, American Splendor (Golden Globe Nomination), The Secret Lives of Dentists, About Schmidt, Hearts of Atlantis, Mumford, The Imposters, Arlington Road, Next Stop Wonderland, The Myth of Fingerprints and Daytrippers. Stage credits include Midsummer Night's Dream, Spinning Into Butter, Ivanov and Two Shakespearean Actors. Off-Broadway in The Food Chain, The Iceman Cometh and Speed the Plow. Voted Best Actress in 2003 by the New York Film Critics.