Alan Weisman

Alan Weisman is the author of seven books, and an award-winning journalist who has worked on seven continents, in the Caribbean and Oceania, and in more than 60 countries.

His latest book, Hope Dies Last, reveals humanity’s best realistic hopes for meeting environmental threats to our existence. He draws on his travels across a dozen countries to tell the stories of the brave visionaries worldwide who are fighting to keep the planet intact and the human enterprise going.

His previous book, Countdown: Our Last, Best Hope for a Future on Earth? was awarded the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Paris Book Festival Prize for nonfiction, the Population Institute’s Global Media Award for best book, and was a finalist for the Orion Book Award and the Books for a Better Life Award. Booklist called Countdown “a riveting read… a major book… rigorous and provoking.”

Alan’s 2007 book The World Without Us, was a New York Times and international bestseller, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Orion Book Award, the Rachel Carson Prize, the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize, and winner of the National Library of China’s Wenjin Book Prize. In 2020, Slate named it one of the top 50 nonfiction books of the last 25 years. It was named a top nonfiction book of the year by TIME and Entertainment Weekly, and has been translated into 34 languages.

Alan is a co-founder of Homelands Productions. His radio pieces have been heard on NPR, Public Radio International, and American Public Media. His writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, The Atlantic, The Los Angeles Times Magazine, The New York Review of Books, Vanity Fair, Mother Jones, Discover, Orion, Salon, VICE, Pacific Standard, Wilson Quarterly, Lapham’s Quarterly, Condé Nast Traveler, and Boston Globe Magazine.

He is also the author of An Echo In My Blood, Gaviotas: A Village to Reinvent the World, La Frontera: The United States Border With Mexico (with photographer Jay Dusard), and We, Immortals.