Half-Earth: Edward O. Wilson's Epic Journey to Save Our Planet

FitOldDog: This book is a must read for all who care about the future of our world and Nature. Extensively documented and reasoned, the beautifully illustrated narrative provides a roadmap for slowing the ecocide, and returning to sanity. Of all the challenges humanity faces today, this is clearly the most critical. If we fail to act now, there will be no going back. Essential reading. Kevin Thomas Morgan

United States on Jul 06, 2023

Tyler M.: I loved reading this. It was incredibly interesting, inspiring, and motivating.

United States on Jun 25, 2023

M. E. Showalter: E.O. Wilson, even though a scientist, writes in a way that is easy to understand. He clearly sounds the alarm re: the threat of climate change but also has a reasonable solution. Of course, it's up to world governments to put the solution in action.

United States on May 20, 2023

Margit Alm: Having read some of E.O. Wilson's writings before and knowing that he is a passionate environmentalist, I was intrigued by the title of the book "Half Earth". The first two parts did not disappoint. E.O. Wilson's extensive scientific knowledge, and his deep and humane concern for the natural world, his rejection of the Anthropocene shone through. Part 3 too started out brilliantly. However, I was looking for the implementation plan of such a bold and lateral idea. It was missing. I personally cannot see how the planet's wilderness places can be increased from 15% to 50% without containing the "Anthropocene", i.e. the current level , let alone projected level, of human population , all aspiring to a high standard of living. But maybe this point will be addressed in a later book or paper.

Australia on Jun 16, 2020

marginal: A fabulous book that should be taught in every school around the world. Saving the biosphere must be seen as a moral enterprise and the most urgent task in human existence if we do want to keep existing at all for the next millennia. Our species has quickly to decide if irrationality, superstition, wishful thinking and tribal behavior should continue to shape our world, or instead, reason, conscience and ecological morality should take over to become the dominant force in our decision making. Reality couldn't care less about human idiocy. Let's keep this in mind, if not for the sake of millions of other species, at least for our own.

United Kingdom on Dec 13, 2019

davide: L'expérience d'une vie consacrée à la biologie et à l'étude des espèces vivantes et des écosystèmes, avec une vue à 360 degrés sur biodiversité, évolution, problèmes et cause de cette 6èmè phase d’extinction de masse des espèces vivantes. Et pour conclure une possible solution à cette catastrophe. Le livre ne manque d'intéressants anecdotes et réflexions.
Je le conseille vraiment.

France on Jul 20, 2019

Rebel Book Club: I read my final book of the year in the Sapa Valley, high up in Northern Vietnam. Wilson’s radical vision that to save most of the world’s flora and fauna from extinction we need to literally make half the planet a conservation zone is compelling. What’s missing is the ‘how to do it’ part, maybe that’s the next book… 7/10

United Kingdom on Jan 14, 2019

JennyG: [This review first appeared in the June 2018 edition of the newsletter of Sustainable Population Australia.]

It seems EO Wilson has been around for as long as God. (Some biologists think he is God.) Actually, he’ll be 89 this year and this book is a cri de couer. He feels the only way to save the species of the world from the sixth mass extinction is to put aside half the Earth’s surface as nature reserves.
EO Wilson has sufficient credibility to be the one to put such a radical idea forward. He has won the Pulitzer Prize, not once but twice, for his books On Human Nature (1978) and The Ants (1990). While the world’s foremost authority on ants, he has an extensive knowledge of biology. Many of us still have his 1992 tome, The Diversity of Life, on our shelves in which Wilson was already addressing the massive species extinctions taking place in the 20th century, ones caused by human activities.
The dodo is the classic case. It fitted with the first rule of extinction biology: “the first to fall are the slow, the dumb and the tasty”. The poor dodo – fat, earthbound and fearless – evolved on Mauritius in the absence of humans but succumbed to Dutch sailors...

United States on May 21, 2018

Amazon Customer: I read Half-Earth after having watched a 2-hr documentary on E.O. Wilson's life, which was very well done. With that background, I launched into reading Half-Earth and found it to be a rather interesting book to read. It is clear that E.O. Wilson is an expert in his field, which I quite appreciate. His writing is often done in the first person, which at first seems odd for a book of this type. However, with the documentary background in my mind, I could 'hear' the author speaking to me throughout the book, which made the reading all the more enjoyable. A key point is that we have much to do in taking care of planet Earth, our home!

Canada on May 23, 2017

Tom Gardner: In a twelve-round heavy-weight professional boxing match, at the beginning of the twelfth round there is a bell and the referee motions the two fighters to the center of the ring to begin the final round of the contest. In the fight for life on the planet Earth, and according to a majority of noted scientists, we are in the twelfth round. And Pulitzer-winning biologist E. O. Wilson is the referee. For most of his life Wilson has been the scientific “voice in the wilderness” feeding us important information about hazards to the well-being of the planet and sending us warnings for how we humans are destroying ecosystem balance and how we may be impeding our own health, including “low blows.”
In a book that I’m going to call “required reading” for everyone within the sound of my voice, Wilson discusses the premise that a huge variety of life-forms on Earth still remain largely unknown to science and that the species discovered and studied well enough to assess, notably the vertebrae animals and flowering plants, are declining in number at an accelerating rate—due almost entirely to human activity. In response to this premise, Wilson very succinctly states: “The...

United States on Jul 10, 2016