Americans have already been warned since the late 1970s that the buildup of skin tightening and inside our atmosphere threatens to melt the polar snow sheets and irreversibly change our climate. With little completed since then to alter this dangerous route, the world has reached a critical threshold. By the finish of the century, it will likely be hotter than at any stage in the last two million years, as well as the sweeping consequences of this switch will determine the continuing future of life on earth for decades to come.

Taking listeners from the melting Alaskan permafrost to storm-torn New Orleans, acclaimed journalist Elizabeth Kolbert methods this monumental problem from every position. She interviews experts and environmentalists, explains the science, draws frightening parallels to dropped civilizations and presents the shifting tales of people who are watching their worlds disappear. Growing out of the award-winning three-part series for the New Yorker, Field Records from a Catastrophe brings the environment into the awareness from the American people and asks what, if anything, can be done to save our world.