Islands of Abandonment: Life in the Post-Human Landscape

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Bridgerton’s Adjoa Andoh reads this bold imagining of the life of the medieval nun and poet Marie de France, half-sister of Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine. This book explores the extraordinary places where humans no longer live – or survive in tiny, precarious numbers – to give us a possible glimpse of what happens when mankind’s impact on nature is forced to stop. Ebooks fulfilled through Glose cannot be printed, downloaded as PDF, or read in other digital readers (like Kindle or Nook). This is far from a grand tour of the world’s beauty spots; some of Flyn’s destinations are the most damaged on Earth. From Tanzanian mountains to the volcanic Caribbean, the forbidden areas of France to the mining regions of Scotland, Flyn brings together some of the most desolate, eerie, ravaged and polluted areas in the world – and shows how, against all odds, they offer our best opportunities for environmental recovery.

This is a book about abandoned places: ghost towns and exclusion zones, no man’s lands and fortress islands – and what happens when nature is allowed to reclaim its place.

Thus, she talks of ecological succession in abandoned landscapes when plants recolonize, including both human wastelands and sites of natural disasters. Because her forays have shown her the power of nature to rebound—albeit damaged, changed, and with great time and effort—she ultimately cannot accept their conclusions. Abandoned ship scrapyards around New York hide a darker legacy of soil and sludge laced with lethal levels of dioxins, PCBs, and pesticides that is best left undisturbed. In Detroit, once America's fourth-largest city, entire streets of houses are falling in on themselves, looters slipping through otherwise silent neighbourhoods. In Detroit, once America’s fourth-largest city, entire streets of houses are falling in on themselves, looters slipping through otherwise silent neighbourhoods.

By turns haunted and hopeful, this luminously written world study is pinned together with profound insight and new ecological discoveries that together map an answer to the big questions: what happens after we’re gone, and how far can our damage to nature be undone? As far as I can tell, Flyn has no background in biology, yet Islands of Abandonment is surprisingly rich in biological and ecological details that she gets right. This sees her engage with the Ehrlichs and the Scrantons of this world who believe it is already too late, that the geological forces put into motion will run their course no matter what, and that the best we can do is brace for impact.That's what we as humans find very difficult to think about and that we can often be very impatient when we have conservation projects because we want to see results now. Flyn wields the pen of a poet but never loses sight of the importance of getting the biological details right.

Islands of Abandonment: Life in the Post-Human Landscape is available on William Collins, 9hr , 6min. Devoid of self-indulgence or decadent ruin porn, I instead found Islands of Abandonment a thoughtfully written and utterly spellbinding book. She asks whether these sites are portents of civilizational collapse when overpopulation, overconsumption, and climate change will finally take their toll.Author and journalist Cal Flyn explores thirteen such locations and here reports their sights, sounds, and smells. To access your ebook(s) after purchasing, you can download the free Glose app or read instantly on your browser by logging into Glose. Cal Flyn Has recently been shortlisted for the British Academy Book Prize for Global Cultural Understanding.