Starred review from January 31, 2022
Brady, the executive director of Orion magazine, and Catapult editor Isen bring together in this powerful collection 19 essays on the climate crisis. In “What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Antarctica,” Elizabeth Rush describes researching a trip to Antarctica with the National Science Foundation, and reading other writers’ accounts of the frozen continent. Beyond the frequent language of conquering and pioneering, she finds that “what remains is what the ice demands: that we work together in order to survive.” In “How Do You Live with Displacement,” Emily Raboteau compiles a diary of the first three months of 2020, each entry a chronicle of what “people in my network said about what they were losing,” and in “After the Storm,” Mary Annaïse Heglar spotlights the link between escalating natural disasters and racial inequality in the United States as she recalls visiting a Hurricane Katrina–ravaged South. The pieces create a moving mix of resolve and sorrow, painting a vivid picture of an era in which “climate change is altering life on Earth at an unprecedented rate,” but “the majority of us can still remember when things were more stable.” The result is a poignant ode to a changing planet.
