Reviews: the world without us

Books

The World Without Us

By Alan Weisman (Picador)

"Wipe us out, and see what's left" is Weisman's challenge. Based on interviews with evolutionary biologists and materials scientists, archaeologists and art conservators, this morbidly fascinating nonfiction eco-thriller depicts a world turning back into wilderness. (New York's subway tunnels would fill with water in two days; Lexington Avenue would become a river.) Weisman proposes a "one child per human mother" policy to reduce the global population to 19th-century levels.

Bridge of Sighs

By Richard Russo (Vintage Contemporaries)

In his first novel since he won the Pulitzer for Empire Falls, Russo returns to a small-town setting (this time in upstate New York) and revisits the theme of how much we are shaped by place and whether it is possible to change. On the eve of a trip to Venice, where he and his wife may encounter a childhood friend who is an expatriate artist, a small-business owner considers their shared past. Writing in The Times, Janet Maslin praised Russo's "wonderfully unfashionable gift for effortless storytelling on a sweeping, multigenerational scale."

Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia

By Ahmed Rashid (Penguin)

Rashid's excellent book Taliban spent several weeks atop the best-seller list in the fall of 2001. In this book, the Pakistani journalist focuses on the five former Soviet republics of Central Asia and shows that growing popular support for radical Islamic movements is a response to the regimes' repressiveness and corruption.

Right Livelihoods: Three Novellas

By Rick Moody (Back Bay/Little, Brown)

An anxious post-9/11 mood pervades these novellas. In the longest and best one, a blast in Lower Manhattan has killed 4 million people. The survivors react with passivity and denial, because "you're bound to become very uncomfortable when 50 square blocks of your city suddenly look like a NASA photo of Mars". Moody's protagonist is a journalist probing the origins of the epidemic abuse of a drug called Albertine.

Um ... : Slips, Stumbles, and Verbal Blunders, and What They Mean

By Michael Erard (Anchor)

According to Erard, a journalist with an M.A. in linguistics, the average person commits 7 to 22 slips of the tongue each day and struggles to find the right word or name between two and four times. In this work of "applied blunderology", he argues that these mistakes illustrate the mind's dynamics and the way language works.

The Passion of Tasha Darsky

By Yael Goldstein Love (Broadway)

The relationship between a brilliant violinist and her daughter, a talented conservatory student, is the focus of this first novel. Love writes thoughtfully about mothers and daughters and the anxiety of growing up in the shadow of success.

New York Times Syndicate

(China Daily 09/09/2008 page20)