NONFICTION
A TRAVELER'S GUIDE TO THE END OF THE WORLD: Tales of Fire, Wind, and Water
by DAVID GESSNER
"A meditative and elegiac look at a country on the brink."
—PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
With sharp intimacy and visionary scope, David Gessner asks what the world will be like in 2063, when his daughter, Hadley, is the same age he is now. What is the future of weather? Of heat, storms, and fire? In this eye-opening tour of climate hotspots, Gessner takes readers from the Gulf of Mexico and the burning American West to New York City and the fragile Outer Banks, where homes are being swallowed by the seas. With his usual sense of humor and a willingness to talk to anyone, Gessner considers earth's extremes in a story of climate crisis that will both entertain and shake people awake to the necessity of navigating this new age together.
June 2023 | Nonfiction | 978-1-948814-81-2 | 368 pp | $21.95
"An act of generational love and courage."
—BILL MCKIBBEN, author The End of Nature
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
DAVID GESSNER is the author of A Traveler's Guide to the End of the World, Quiet Desperation Savage Delight, and Leave It As It Is: A Journey Through Theodore Roosevelt’s American Wilderness and the New York Times-bestselling All the Wild That Remains. Chair of the Creative Writing Department at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, and founder and editor-in-chief of Ecotone, Gessner lives in Wilmington, North Carolina, with his wife, the novelist Nina de Gramont, and their daughter, Hadley.
ALSO BY THE AUTHOR
QUIET DESPERATION SAVAGE DELIGHT: Sheltering with Thoreau in the Age of Crisis
When the pandemic struck, nature writer David Gessner turned to Henry David Thoreau, the original social distancer, for lessons on how to live. Those lessons—of learning our own backyard, re-wilding, loving nature, self-reliance, and civil disobedience—hold a secret that could help save us as we face the greater crisis of climate.
"A fast-paced but powerful, moving treasure trove of life lessons Gessner divined by spending a year making the best he could of a global tragedy. He doesn’t try to make sense of the pandemic—that’s impossible. Instead, he assesses what he can learn from his life amid this mess and, by extension, what we can learn from ours."
—WASHINGTON INDEPENDENT REVIEW OF BOOKS
PRAISE FOR A TRAVELER'S GUIDE TO THE END OF THE WORLD
"Resonant work. Drawing on personal experiences and conversations with affected communities, A Traveler’s Guide to the End of the World issues moving warnings about future dangers while bearing witness to the precarious present."
—FOREWORD REVIEWS
"Excellent environmental journalism."
—KIRKUS REVIEWS
"A meditative and elegiac look at a country on the brink."
—PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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"A veteran writer on the environment, Gessner evokes the havoc resulting from human-caused climate change by taking us to a host of melting, blazing, flooded or desiccated places...evocative prose and knowledgeable commentary."
—THE WASHINGTON POST
"A highly readable, thought-provoking book."
—BOOK RIOT
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"A Traveler’s Guide is a highway road sign bedazzled with flashing-red lights that command us to halt—and to open our ears to what the earth is saying."
—WASHINGTON INDEPENDENT REVIEW OF BOOKS
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"Gessner details the bright spots found at the end of the world and makes us realize that—if we keep fighting—the end just might be a new beginning."
—MARC BEAUDIN, Big Sky Journal
“With his signature humor, Gessner manages to show us the worst while helping us hope for the best.”
—ANNE HOLMAN, The King’s English Bookshop
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“Gessner plunges headfirst into the reality of climate change in this visionary and crystalline portrait of how our world, our landscapes, and, perhaps most importantly, our hearts, are forever altered.”
—AIMEE NEZHUKUMATATHIL, author of World of Wonders
“Gessner bears powerful witness to the places he loves best, tracing the connections among their crises and finding possibility in their uncertain futures.”
—MICHELLE NIJHUIS, author of Beloved Beasts
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“Important reading…I became a magpie peering over Gessner’s literary shoulder.”
—J. DREW LANHAM, author of The Home Place
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“This profound love letter to an uncertain future will forever change the way you imagine resilience, resistance, and transformation in the face of a rapidly changing planet.”
—MICHAEL P. BRANCH, author of On the Trail of the Jackalope
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“Others write book reports on global warming, spewing statistics. Gessner immerses himself, getting to know the people most affected while telling their stories, writing from inside the crisis.”
—MARK SPITZER, author of Monster Fishing
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"Urgent but not panicked, this book is as personal and vulnerable as the world Gessner is describing."
—BRAD COSTA, Boulder Book Store
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“David Gessner is a necessary traveler along the border between the present and the future. Let him be your guide with this splendid book.“
—CONGRESSMAN JAMIE RASKIN
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“With elements of dark humor that come flying like swallows going home, Gessner's journey becomes one of hoping to remember what's gone, writing a field guide to the life still present.”
—LINDA HOGAN, author of A History of Kindness
