The World Without Us; Your House Without You

If you go to a holiday movie this weekend, you doubtless will see a preview of I Am Legend starring Will Smith as the last man in New York City. But for the real story of what would happen if we all suddenly booked a reservation at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, you should check out Alan Weisman's controvertial book The World Without Us, which paints a verbal portrait of what our planet might look like should human beings summarily disappear.

If this sounds like a bit of a downer for the holiday season, it's not--according to Salon, the book "restores our sense of awe" at the power of nature: "By approaching the end of humanity from this unique angle, as a given, Weisman succeeds in throwing the spotlight on the earth itself -- and invests us in her fate. His thought experiment is so intellectually fascinating, so oddly playful, that it escapes categorizing and clichés -- in particular that earnest moralizing that can make environmental screeds so predictable."

You can read an excerpt from the book on the NPR website, and listen to a New York Times podcast here. To watch a video representation of what would happen to your house (pictured) if abandoned to nature, click this link.