As the writer Diane Ackerman tells it, homo sapiens is a force of nature nearly unprecedented in Earth's 4.5-billion years. Like an asteroid blast, humans altered some of the planet's fundamental processes in a geological blink of an eye. In her latest book, Ackerman takes stock of the changes wrought in the Anthropocene or "human age," from the stamp of our settlements viewable from space, to the redistribution of life-forms, to ocean acidification. She joins us Monday to take stock of the world shaped by us.
Diane Ackerman will be in Salt Lake City on Saturday, October 22, as part of the the Utah Humanities Council's 2014 Book Festival. That event is at 6 p.m.
Diane Ackerman is the author of numerous books, including The Zookeeper's Wife and A Natural History of the Senses. Her new book is called The Human Age: The World Shaped by Us [Amazon|Indiebound]