Book Review - A Traveler's Guide to the End of the World: Tales of Fire, Wind and Water - Torrey House Press

      I first made the acquaintance of David Gessner way back in 2001 when I acquired a copy of Return of the Osprey. I enjoyed that book very much, and in a pure stroke of serendipity had re-read it only weeks before receiving a request from the publicists of A Traveler's Guide to the End of the World  to review Gessner's latest work.

     It gives me great satisfaction to report that the enchantment I felt when reading Return of the Osprey has been rekindled, and perhaps even enhanced, upon reading Gessner's exploration of the future of a world dealing with climate change (already upon us); hence the subtitle Tales of Fire, Wind and Water.

     There is no shortage of books, journals and magazines, both popular and scientific, chronicling the catastrophic rise of CO2 in the atmosphere and the relentless rise in the temperature of the planet and its oceans. To deny that climate change is here, that the western part of North America burns to a crisp each year, to ignore the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, to dismiss the disappearance of Antarctic ice, is the preserve of some, including politicians who wield influence over policy, to claim it is all a hoax, but they are increasingly on the fringe. Conspiracy theories abound, climate deniers shout from bully pulpits, but the clear, rational voices of science paint a different picture entirely. People who have lost all they ever knew to firestorms, hurricanes and storm surges hitherto beyond the scope of human experience, will assure you that climate change is here. 

     Gessner approaches this phenomenon, this existential threat to life as we know it, not from a generalist, alarmist perspective, but from a sober examination of what the Earth will be like for his daughter, Hadley, forty-two years into the future, when she will be the age he is now. This adds a sense of intimacy, a poignant relevance, to an overwhelming sense of powerlessness in the face of a world that has still not come to grips with reality, and at best tackles global climate change in a piecemeal, frequently unrealistic manner. Sometimes it becomes downright deceitful when lawmakers in the United States literally ban the use of terms like climate change or global warming, substituting innocuous, but pernicious euphemisms instead. 

     Such is the future for Hadley. She has gone off to college in Manhattan. Will her chosen destination soon be under water? Super Storm Sandy was but a portent of what is still to come.

     Gessner is plagued by doubt, by fear, by foreboding and a sense of unease about the world we have bequeathed to Hadley. There are lessons for all of us, and if we care to examine our circumstances there is a path forward. The road will not be easy and the hazards will only get worse before the climate stabilizes. But we need to tackle these problems and do it now. 

     We owe it to all the Hadleys of the world don't we?

A Traveler's Guide to the End of the World: Tales of Fire, Wind and Water - Torrey House Press

David Gessner

Paperback - US$21.95 - ISBN: 9781948814812

366 pages

Publishing Date: June, 2023