Footprints: In Search of Future Fossils
(Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $28)
“This is a book that will make you think about how you’re living, and how you want to be remembered,” said Alexander McNamara in ScienceFocus.com. Even if our species cleans up its act starting today, the changes we’ve already made to the planet will outlive us for eons. In Footprints, Scottish writer David Farrier circles the globe seeking out examples of the lasting traces our Anthropocene epoch will leave long after we’re gone. What would an archaeologist of the far future make of our road cuts and single-use plastics and the plutonium-239 produced by our atomic bombs? We might be due for a scolding, but Footprints isn’t that kind of book, said the New Scientist. Instead it’s “an oddly hopeful exploration of deep time and a world doing fine without us.”
Farrier is an inquisitive sort, and “his journey takes in marvels,” said The Economist. He finds a Canadian poet who is working to encode verse into the DNA of Deinococcus radiodurans, a nearly unkillable bacterium. He lets us hear the tomb-like hush of an underground ice lab in Australia and the eerie moaning of the melting Ross Ice Shelf. He is at ease writing about science as well, despite being a university lecturer on literature and despite occasionally mentioning distances or time spans too large for readers to grasp. “When Farrier indulges his bookishness,” however, “the result is exhila
by Anthony Trollope (1875). Surely the biggest, baddest baddie in literature, Augustus Melmotte, a foreigner intent on swindling dumb British toffs out of their last inheritance, arrives in London with a load of fake shares and a beautiful daughter. He nearly succeeds, but his comeuppance when it comes is thoroughly enjoyable. This often-overlooked social satire has spooky resonances with today: It should be given to all self-important tycoons.
The Way We Live Now
by Nancy Mitford (1945). This was a present from my grandmother to mark my 15th birthday that I’ve treasured ever since. Mitford’s satire tells a loosely autobiographical tale of a charming and bonkers aristocratic family. Hidden under layers of satire is a tragic tale of lost opportunity and the perils of romantic love.
The Pursuit of Love
by Elena Ferrante (2012–2015). Discovering Ferrante later than most, I read these books back to back, only pausing/sleeping from absolute necessity. Beginning with My Brilliant Friend, she tells the story of two friends from childhood to middle age and how fate, choice, and random events affect their
The Neapolitan novels
lives. Husbands, lovers, family, and children are bit players on a stage dominated by one central extraordinary and destructive female friendship.
by Evelyn Waugh (1938). An utterly absurd but brilliant tale of mistaken identity: A newspaper sends its nature correspondent to cover an African civil war. This fast, light, and lethal novel skewers journalists and the privileged.
by Leo Tolstoy (1877). One-line synopsis: the story of an entrancing, beautiful woman who lives and then dies for passion. It should be required reading for anyone wanting to learn about themselves or others. On every page, Tolstoy lays bare the frailties and peccadilloes of human behavior.
by Richard Powers (2018). Nine Americans from disparate backgrounds come together to save a forest. This extraordinary novel transformed my view about nature—never again will I pass a great tree without offering a quiet but heartfelt incantation of thanks, gratitude, and wonder. Nor will I take for granted trees’ importance to every aspect of our ecosystem, or our duty to protect them.
Scoop
Anna Karenina
The Overstory