
Hope Dies Last
Visionary People Across the World, Fighting to Find Us a Future
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Narrated by:
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Fred Sanders
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Alan Weisman
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By:
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Alan Weisman
About this listen
One of Heatmap's 18 Climate Books to Read in 2025
The award-winning environmental journalist’s extraordinary, long-awaited portrait of hope and resilience as we face a fractured and uncertain future
In this profoundly human and moving narrative, the bestselling author of The World Without Us returns with a book ten years in the making: a study of what it means to be a human on the front lines of our planet’s existential crisis. His new book, Hope Dies Last, is a literary evocation of our current predicament and the core resolve of our species against the most precarious odds we have ever faced.
To write this book, Weisman traveled the globe, witnessing climate upheaval and other devastations, and meeting the people striving to mitigate and undo our past transgressions. From the flooding Marshall Islands to revived wetlands in Iraq, from the Netherlands and Bangladesh to the Korean DMZ and to cities and coastlines in the U.S. and around the world, he has encountered the best of humanity battling heat, hunger, rising tides, and imperiled nature. He profiles the innovations of big thinkers—engineers, scientists, conservationists, economists, architects, and artists—as they conjure wildly creative, imaginative responses to an uncertain, ominous future. At this unprecedented point in history, as our collective exploits on this planet may lead to our own undoing and we could be among the species marching toward extinction, they refuse to accept defeat.
Hope Dies Last fills a crucial gap in the global conversation: Having reached a point of no return in our climate confrontation, how do we feel, behave, act, plan, and dream as we approach a future decidedly different from what we had expected?
* This audiobook edition includes a downloadable PDF containing maps of select regions discussed in the book.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2025 Alan Weisman (P)2025 Penguin AudioCritic reviews
“Hope Dies Last is a book of heroism, courage, and selfless love. Every story is a way forward. This is one of the most exciting books I've ever read, full of innovation. Alan Weisman has written the exact book we need to fight for our place on Earth.”—Louise Erdrich, author of The Mighty Red and Pulitzer Prize-winning The Night Watchman
"In Hope Dies Last, Alan Weisman takes us on a global journey to witness both humanity's impact on our planet and our extraordinary resilience in the face of environmental crisis. Through vivid portraits of flooding islands, revived wetlands, and imperiled coastlines, he introduces us to the engineers, scientists, and visionaries working to imagine creative solutions for an uncertain future. Weisman masterfully captures the human spirit as we confront perhaps our greatest challenge: how to adapt to and persist in a world fundamentally altered by climate change. This profound narrative offers not just a clear-eyed look at our predicament, but a testament to the remarkable human capacity for hope even in extraordinarily challenging times."—Neil Shubin, author of the national bestseller Your Inner Fish and Ends of the Earth
"Consider this a non-fiction companion to Kim Stanley Robinson's Ministry for the Future: Alan Weisman has traveled the world to find the people doing what they can to slow down the greatest tragedy in our history. You'll be inspired—maybe even to become one of these people yourself."—Bill McKibben, author of The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon
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