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At Home on an Unruly Planet

Finding Refuge on a Changed Earth

Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

"Madeline Ostrander narrates in tones of warning, anger, and sadness as she ticks off the environmental crises facing the world. She adds something else, too: sentiment."- AudioFile

This program is read by the author.
From rural Alaska to coastal Florida, a vivid account of Americans working to protect the places they call home in an era of climate crisis

How do we find a sense of home and rootedness in a time of unprecedented upheaval? What happens when the seasons and rhythms in which we have built our lives go off-kilter?
Once a distant forecast, climate change is now reaching into the familiar, threatening our basic safety and forcing us to reexamine who we are and how we live. In At Home on an Unruly Planet, science journalist Madeline Ostrander reflects on this crisis not as an abstract scientific or political problem but as a palpable force that is now affecting all of us at home. She offers vivid accounts of people fighting to protect places they love from increasingly dangerous circumstances. A firefighter works to rebuild her town after catastrophic western wildfires. A Florida preservationist strives to protect one of North America's most historic cities from rising seas. An urban farmer struggles to transform a California city plagued by fossil fuel disasters. An Alaskan community heads for higher ground as its land erodes.
Ostrander pairs deeply reported stories of hard-won optimism with lyrical essays on the strengths we need in an era of crisis. This audiobook is required listening for anyone who wants to make a home in the twenty-first century.
A Macmillan Audio production from Henry Holt and Company.

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    • Publisher's Weekly

      May 23, 2022
      “What happens when the rhythms, the seasons, the known patterns within which we have built our homes, our lives, our towns, our places, go off-kilter,” science journalist Ostrander wonders in her somewhat uneven debut. In examining how the concept of “home” is shifting as the planet becomes increasingly inhospitable, she cites data showing that in 2019 alone, 24.9 million people lost their homes to “climate change impacts.” She interviews an Annapolis, Md., architect working to protect the city from rising sea levels, an Alaska administrator who is relocating a rural community because of erosion, and an ecopsychologist researching the connection between “people’s emotional health and the natural world.” Ostrander finds examples from history of Indigenous engineering solutions to address rising sea levels, such as coastal shell mounds, that are far more effective than the “shimmering new real estate developments, glassy luxury condos, palatial beach houses, and boxy McMansions” across the Atlantic Coast. Her writing is strong, but she tends to get sidetracked with undeveloped ideas (“We will need a new set of stories about what it looks like to live on Earth in a manner that doesn’t destroy our future”). Still, those willing to sift through the chaff will find fascinating musings on a changing planet.

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Madeline Ostrander narrates in tones of warning, anger, and sadness as she ticks off the environmental crises facing the world. She adds something else, too: sentiment. Ostrander voices the fears of a female smoke jumper as the fires come near her town and endanger her home. Listeners hear Ostrander's gently spun account of life in a village in the Alaskan permafrost before hearing of efforts to move the homes to outrun climate change. Ostrander takes on an angry tone as she tells the story of Californians who protest against a refinery after a fire. Her final plea for listeners to take action is voiced softly as she reminds us that everyone is affected by climate change. J.A.S. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine

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  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

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  • English

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