2022 World Affairs Council of the Year
Network of Independent World Affairs Councils of America
The World Affairs Councils of America provides a monthly special program called “Cover to Cover” that features interactive phone conferencing with authors of global affairs related books. We thank them for their support and we are pleased to share this information with you here as a benefit of your affiliation with the Tennessee World Affairs Council.
Cover to Cover
Cover to Cover is a monthly program featuring the most influential authors on subjects of national and international importance.
Hot Topics
Hot Topics teleconference calls are a benefit of membership in the World Affairs Councils of America. They periodically host a specialist to talk to you about important developments in global affairs.
You Are Invited to This Conversation on Another Hot Topic — “The Unnatural World: The Race to Remake Civilization in Earth’s Newest Age” by David Biello
Wednesday, February 15 – 1:00-1:30 CT
February’s Cover to Cover will host David Biello, TED’s new science curator, on his new book The Unnatural World: The Race to Remake Civilization in Earth’s Newest Age on Wednesday, February 15, at 2 PM ET.
David Biello is an award-winning journalist who has been reporting on the environment and energy since 1999. He has been an editor and contributing writer at Scientific American, and he also contributes frequently to the Los Angeles Review of Books, Yale e360, Nautilus, and Aeon. Biello has been a guest on radio shows, such as WNYC’s The Takeaway, NHPR’s Word of Mouth, and PRI’s The World. He hosts the ongoing duPont-Columbia award-winning documentary Beyond the Light Switch for PBS.
A Science Friday and Smithsonian Magazine Best Science Book of the Year
With the historical perspective of The Song of the Dodo and the urgency of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, a brilliant young environmental journalist argues that we must innovate and adapt to save planet Earth.
Civilization is in crisis, facing disasters of our own making on the only planet known to bear life in the vast void of the universe. We have become unwitting gardeners of the Earth, not in control, but setting the conditions under which all of life flourishes—or not. Truly, it’s survival of the innovators.
The Unnatural World chronicles a disparate band of unlikely heroes: an effervescent mad scientist who would fertilize the seas; a pigeon obsessive bent on bringing back the extinct; a low-level government functionary in China doing his best to clean up his city, and more. These scientists, billionaires, and ordinary people are all working toward saving the best home humanity is ever likely to have.
What is the threat? It is us. In a time when a species dies out every ten minutes, when summers are getting hotter, winters colder, and oceans higher, some people still deny mankind’s effect on the Earth. But all of our impacts on the planet have ushered in what qualifies as a new geologic epoch, thanks to global warming, mass extinction, and such technologies as nuclear weapons or plastics. The Unnatural World examines the world we have created and analyzes the glimmers of hope emerging from the efforts of incredible individuals seeking to change our future. Instead of a world without us, this history of the future shows how to become good gardeners, helping people thrive along with an abundance of plants, animals, all the exuberant profusion of life on Earth—a better world with us. The current era of humans need not be the end of the world—it’s just the end of the world as we know it.
Source: Amazon.com
The Tennessee World Affairs Council is a nonprofit (501c3), nonpartisan educational charity based in Nashville that works to build understanding of global issues in our communities. Learn more about the Council and find how you can join, donate and volunteer at: www.TNWAC.org —
