The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming

Last month I read the U.S. Climate Report, but only when I read this book did our predicament come devastatingly to life. Why? The facts are, mostly, the same; Wallace-Wells has only gathered existing reports into what, at times, reads like a Harper's Index of doom. Is it because it's written in a literary way, packaged in a handsome, literary volume, as befits a writer who used to work at the Paris Review? Is it because he vividly describes the climate changes that are already snowballing (or, rather, fireballing) and that are just a few decades from making our planet unrecognizable and, for many, unlivable? Is it because, despite calling himself an "optimist," he offers little hope, even though the knowledge of our situation and the technical (if not political) solutions are both at hand? Whatever the reason, there is no book I've read in years that is going to live under my skin every day the way this one does. Its dire portrait of the coming decades—"It is much, much worse than you think" is the opening sentence—may lead you to action, or to fatalism, but I can't imagine leaving this book unchanged.