Earthlings: Imaginative Encounters with the Natural World

Silver Medal, 2023 Nautilus Book Awards in the category of Ecology and Environment

Amid environmental catastrophe, it is vital to recall what unites all forms of life. We share characteristics and genetic material extending back billions of years. More than that, we all―from humans to plants to bacteria―share a planet. We are all Earthlings.

Adrian Parr calls on us to understand ourselves as existing with and among the many forms of Earthling life. She argues that human survival requires us to recognize our interdependent relationships with the other species and systems that make up life on Earth. In a series of meditations, Earthlings portrays the wonder and beauty of life with deep feeling, vivid detail, and an activist spirit. Parr invites readers to travel among the trees of the Amazonian rainforest; take flight with birds and butterflies migrating through the skies; and plunge into the oceans with whales and polar bears―as well as to encounter bodies infected with deadly viruses and maimed by the violence of global capitalism.

Combining poetic observation with philosophical contemplation and scientific evidence, Parr offers a moving vision of a world in upheaval and a potent manifesto for survival. Earthlings is both a joyful celebration of the magnificence of the biosphere and an urgent call for action to save it.

Adrian Parr is the dean of the College of Design at the University of Oregon and a senior fellow of the Design Futures Council. She has served for nearly a decade as a UNESCO water chair. Her previous Columbia University Press books are The Wrath of Capital: Neoliberalism and Climate Change Politics (2012) and Birth of a New Earth: The Radical Politics of Environmentalism (2017).