A very blunt report of the environmental outlook of humanity and commentary on our global gamble with long-term planetary health. I think it was overall optimistic - we as a species have all the right tools to establish a health progress to fixing our environmental footprint, but thus far markets remained skewed, and we lack the political will to put these tools into action. This book was written in 1999 and still remains relevant today. I believe anyone interested in environmental issues should read this book. It did, and still can, teach much.

This book will make you a better person. It opens your eyes to what it truly means to be a good steward of this Earth. It is depressing at times but the author has some great ideas for changes.

Shocking book about a one man's journey around the globe, describing the state of the planet where ever he goes.

In the 1990s, an American journalist visited many environmentally blighted places: a refugee camp in South Sudan, Russian villages downstream of Kombinat Mayak, Bangkok, Chinese and Brazilian countryside, and many more. The air and water are terribly polluted, and people are sick. For several years, not a single boy from several villages around a heavily poluted river in North China has been able to pass the army physical examination; in a village in Amazonia, children routinely die of dehydration and dysentery, especially children from very large families and children of unwed mothers; Soviet doctors routinely lied to the residents of villages around Kombinat Mayak about the cause of their various radiation-related illnesses. Hertsgaard implies that if radical measures are not taken, the entire world will live like this. Among environment-disrupting technologies, he is particularly fond of automobiles and nuclear energy. Hertsgaard calls for a "Global Green Deal" that would "renovate human civilization from top to bottom in environmentally sustainable ways".

The narrative is interesting, and it is good for one's mental health to be occasionally reminded, how the less fortunate live. Yet while reading this book (and Laurie Garrett's Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health, which is also a slumming book, and quite a few more), I kept getting the feeling that there is more to the story than we are being told. There has been a war between Sudan's Arab North and black African South for most of Sudan's independence, causing enormous suffering - who made these two areas one country, and why? If many environmental problems of the Third World have political causes, then how can we blame the UN and rich countries for not doing enough to address them? Imagine Martian peacekeepers and aid workers descending on Europe in 1943.

Hertsgaard writes, "The claim that high-efficiency cars are impractical was publicly mocked when Greenpeace activists "kidnapped" a Renault Vesta-2 prototype in 1993 and brought it to the International Car Show for spectators to test drive. The Vesta-2 had a maximum speed of 140 miles an hour but got 107 miles per gallon in highway driving. Toyota, GM, Ford and Volkswagen had produced similar prototypes but, like Renault, had not put them on the market, claiming they were uneconomical". A Google search shows that the Renault Vesta-2 weighed 475kg. A Honda Insight with a 5-speed manual transmission and air conditioning weighs 848kg. Will anyone venture to guess, why Vesta-2 was not put into production? He also repeats the GM-destroyed-public-transportation-in-Los-Angeles canard that has been refuted so many times (when will it ever die? Probably the day the story about Prince Grigory Potemkin constructing fake villages and the story about Polish cavalry attacking German tanks kick the bucket). When I read things like this in a book, I ask myself the question: in what other areas, which I do not know as well, is this book as true to the facts as here?

Wonderful book. Author writes about first hand experiences in third world countries while simultaneously digging deep into the problems that people face in each country due to environmental problems, what has been done to mitigate them, and what should be done. Inspired me.

A quest for answers to the questions that really matters. Makes you think closer about your own daily actions. Action makes reaction. You know. Chapter three is one of those that is right on the painful spot!

They need a category for tried to read and failed. What is it about this book? Highly recommended by Sievert Rohwer, who I respect enormously and who actually went so far as to provide a free copy to all attendants of the 2001 AOU meeting. I admit to having found myself self-righteously espousing ideas from the first chapter (and only chapter I read). Just couldn't get any further. Suspect it might have to do with the inexcusably hideous cover.

Read this book about 2000 i think. There's some very thought provoking areas on industrial pollution. One i'd like to read again to see if it's stood the test of time. At the time an excellent read.

Insanely informative

What Mark Hertsgaard uncovers here is just really coming to light in the mainstream press (over the past three years or so),he was revealing back in 1999!
This read is not dated, as you can use the time of it's release (1999) and compare the writers warnings to what you see happening around you today. I like the way the writer deals patiently and respectfully with the people that he meets in his travels. The backgrounds of the nuclear research facilities in the US and in Russia is chilling.

This is one of the best books that I have ever read and the very best environmental book even though it was written in the 90's. It was a very well documented first hand look at the world issues, and beautifully written.

I read this book because it is by a guy who spent seven years traveling the world to write a book about the environment.

Mark is a good writer, and I admire many passages in this book. Likewise, he has fantastic passages about some of the people he meets. I also really like the section where he takes the long-run perspective, talking about the history of the earth and how we find ourselves at this point in civilization. In general, when he talks about history, I like it.

His organizing question, though, "Will humans survive our environmental destruction," is not a very good one. The question is about the quality of life.

The book is organized thematically, not chronologically or by country. In the end, I almost feel that it has too much analysis and not enough travel. Sometimes I get a sense of the places he is, but then he launches into pages of researched statistics, and, while all is interesting, gets away from the place he is visiting.

The book is dated, now ten years old, so many of the facts he presents are old news to me, so maybe that is part of my displeasure with the book.

The book simultaneously has too much of the author and not enough. I don't learn about what his travel experiences were like, and I don't have any idea of his personality, other than I have an impression that he's kind of a boring person to hang out with. But it is hard to say -- there is very little full travel narrative here. But on the other hand, he expounds for a long time in each chapter. Most of this is substantive research on the topics at hand--but I feel like it is too much. There are other books for that.

Of course, Time said it was "one of the best environmental books in recent years."