H Is for Hope: Climate Change from A to Z

Summary

In twenty-six essays—one for each letter of the alphabet—the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Sixth Extinction takes us on a haunting journey through the history of climate change and the uncertainties of our future.

In H Is for Hope, Elizabeth Kolbert investigates the landscape of climate change—from “A,” for Svante Arrhenius, who created the world’s first climate model in 1894, to “Z,” for the Colorado River Basin, ground zero for climate change in the United States. Along the way she looks at Greta Thunburg’s “blah blah blah” speech (“B”), learns to fly an all-electric plane (“E”), experiments with the effects of extreme temperatures on the human body (“T”), and struggles with the deep uncertainty of the future of climate change (“U”).

Adapted from essays originally published in The New Yorker, H Is for Hope is simultaneously inspiring, alarming, and darkly humorous—a unique examination of our changing world.