by James Crawford
Bloomsbury Publishing
8/4/2026, hardcover
SKU: 9781639733224
From the acclaimed author of The Edge of the Plain, a journey to the ravaged frontiers of extractive industry and the promising, often radical alternatives emerging just as we reach the point of exhausting the earth's natural resources.
Over the last half-century, humanity has taken more from the Earth than in all prior history combined. The planet is littered with the vast scars of extraction - yet, ironically, it is only by confronting the ruins of our 'old' world that we can find the path towards the 'new'.
In The Vanishing Earth, James Crawford, born into a landscape and family steeped in fossil fuels, takes readers to the literal and ideological frontiers of extraction. Beginning with the story of humanity's decoupling from nature, Crawford embarks on an epic journey to five resource landscapes rapidly trending towards exhaustion: landscapes of rock, metal, sand, water and thought. From the salt flats of Chile's Atacama Desert lithium mines to the 'sacrifice zone' of Florida's phosphorus-rich Bone Valley, and even chillingly advanced attempts to harvest personal data from the brain itself, Crawford explores some of the most extreme scenes of the Anthropocene. Along the way, he asks what lies behind our insatiable appetites and explores emerging alternatives that might just spare our vanishing natural resources, transform our economies, and save our relationship with nature itself.
Reviews:
"The best books leave readers with facts they didn't know. The rare ones leave them with ideas they cannot stop testing against experience. Since finishing The Vanishing Earth, it has become difficult to watch a corporate merger, scroll through social media, read about artificial intelligence or hear the language of 'human resources' without wondering whether another form of extraction is taking place. Crawford gives readers a new lens through which to see the modern world. Once you've looked through it, it's surprisingly difficult to look away." --Philip Martin, Arkansas Democrat Gazette
"Beautifully written, surprising and (dare I say it) important, The Vanishing Earth explores the ragged edges and obscure interiors of capitalism's relentlessly expanding territory and asks how we can stop commodifying and consuming everything from sand to our own minds before it really is too late. This book is worth your time and attention." -- Adam Welz, author of The End of Eden
"In The Vanishing Earth, James Crawford travels beyond the physical frontiers of a planet consuming itself into the human psyche, where the harvesting of thought, attention, emotions, and neural data represents represents the latest, and most intimate, form of extraction. The Vanishing Earth is urgent and immersive. Crawford asks not just what we are losing but why we can't stop." -- Greg Grandin, author of American, Amèrica
"[A] sweeping account of the toll the pursuit of endless economic growth has taken on the planet...a dizzying feat of reporting." -- Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"You will never look at sand, food, phones, or concrete the same way after reading this book. A touching exploration of the dark underbelly of our modern world and how we can move beyond it." -- Luke Kemp, author of Goliath's Curse
"Urgent, illuminating, and deeply unsettling, The Vanishing Earth forces us to confront a stark question: if the logic of extraction is driving us toward planetary collapse, what kind of society must we build to escape it?" --Kohei Saito, internationally bestselling author of Slow Down and Capital from Zero
About the Author:
James Crawford is an acclaimed historian, publisher and broadcaster. His book Fallen Glory was selected as a Sunday Times Must Read, and a Book of the Year by the New Statesman and the Independent. His latest, The Edge of the Plain: How Borders Make and Break Our World earned rave reviews in The New York Review of Books and The Washington Post, and was featured on CNN's Amanpour. He lives in Edinburgh.