Wohlforth’s The Fate of Nature to be published by Thomas Dunne/St. Martin’s Press June 8, 2010

Synopsis:

• The Fate of Nature uses the characters and grandeur of Alaska, and the latest science, to examine the greatest issue facing humankind: do we have what it takes to join together to save nature.

• The key to the environment is human nature. For 50 years we’ve read books sounding alarms and offering technological solutions. So why hasn’t the earth been saved? The Fate of Nature finds the problem in ourselves, and our culture.

• It’s not hopeless. Wohlforth examines the exploding science of human nature to come to a hopeful conclusion that we can cooperate to save the planet, if we try. Elinor Ostrom became the first woman to with the Nobel Prize for economics in 2009 with this message.

• Alaska is the stage. The ideas are dramatized by real people in extreme conditions. Characters include Captain Cook, Teddy Roosevelt, Native villagers, a blind seashell expert, a fisherman devastated by the Exxon oil spill who still compulsively cleans beaches—and others.

• Advance praise comes from Bill McKibben, Sylvia Earle, Senator Mark Begich, Elizabeth Kolbert and Alan Weisman, author of the best-selling The World Without Us, who calls  The Fate of  Nature, “An immense book that confronts the biggest question we’ll ever face: Do we humans have it in us to square with nature before it’s too late?”

• Wohlforth’s previous book, The Whale and the Supercomptuer, which won the LA Times Book Prize, likewise wove together science and intimate portraits of the real people affected, of which Publishers Weekly said, “Part adventure story, part science writing accessible to the general reader, … thoroughly engrossing.”