Islands of Abandonment - bookrastinating.com

Hardcover, 384 pages

Published June 1, 2021 by Viking.

ISBN:: 978-1-9848-7819-9

Investigative journalist Cal Flyn's ISLANDS OF ABANDONMENT, an exploration of the world's most desolate, abandoned places that have now been reclaimed by nature, from the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea to the "urban prairie" of Detroit to the irradiated grounds of Chernobyl, in an ultimately redemptive story about the power and promise of the natural world.

6 editions

Lucas reviewed Islands of Abandonment by Cal Flyn

Frustrating, inert, unsympathetic

1 star

Read this with my wife, as it seemed it up our alley and we might learn something etc. But the author does not really seem to be calling for any action to counter the destruction of the Earth; if anything, discounts it by talking about faith, about seeing weeds grow in a parking lot, and failing to ever deal with the larger forces of imperialism, capital, and violence that create the "post-human landscapes" she describes so lushly.

(And, man, we could barely make it through a page or two before putting it down to note the authors' classist, colonialist perspective. At first, it seemed as if she was just, you know, from the other side of the Atlantic, and wasn't being careful with how she, say, spoke of native peoples in the Americas, or the imagery she used while describing poorer people. But there was a chapter that felt …

Read this with my wife, as it seemed it up our alley and we might learn something etc. But the author does not really seem to be calling for any action to counter the destruction of the Earth; if anything, discounts it by talking about faith, about seeing weeds grow in a parking lot, and failing to ever deal with the larger forces of imperialism, capital, and violence that create the "post-human landscapes" she describes so lushly.

(And, man, we could barely make it through a page or two before putting it down to note the authors' classist, colonialist perspective. At first, it seemed as if she was just, you know, from the other side of the Atlantic, and wasn't being careful with how she, say, spoke of native peoples in the Americas, or the imagery she used while describing poorer people. But there was a chapter that felt like a defence of imperial invasions; at best, a "get over it" attitude.)