A Hundred Little Pieces on the End of the World

Book excerpt: Written with clarity, tenacity, humor, and warmth, A Hundred Little Pieces on the End of the World attempts to find tolerable ethical positions in the face of barely tolerable events—and the real possibility of an intolerable future. It is a compelling, surprising, disturbing, and highly literate work of reportage and contemplation. It is both a collection of gentle-spirited wisdom and a rumination on ruin, as if distilled in equal measure from the spirits of Norman Maclean’s A River Runs Through It and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. Through these ten essays, each further broken into ten smaller pieces, Rember examines the practical and ethical dilemmas of climate change, population, resource depletion, and mass extinction. At the same time, he never forgets those improbable connections between human beings that lead to moments of joy, empathy, and grace.