Learning to Die in the Anthropocene

A war veteran, journalist, and author, Roy Scrantonhas published in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Rolling Stone, Boston Review, and Theory and Event, and has been interviewed on NPR's Fresh Air, among other media.

More praise for Learning to Die in the Anthropocene: "Roy Scranton gets it. He knows in his bones that this civilization is over. He knows it is high time to start again the human dance of making some other way to live. In his distinctive and original way he works though a common cultural inheritance, making it something fresh and new for these all too interesting times. This compressed, essential text offers both uncomfortable truths and unexpected joy."--McKenzie Wark, author of Molecular Red: Theory for the Anthropocene "We're f*cked. We know it. Kind of. But Roy Scranton in this blistering new book goes down to the darkness, looks hard and doesn't blink. He even brings back a few, hard-earned slivers of light... What is philosophy? It's time comprehended in thought. This is our time and Roy Scranton has had the courage to think it in prose that sometimes feels more like bullets than bullet points."--Simon Critchley, Co-founder and moderator of The New York Times online philosophy series "The Stone" "An eloquent, ambitious, and provocative book."--Rob Nixon, author of Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor "Roy Scranton has written a howl for the Anthropocene--a book full of passion, fire, science and wisdom. It cuts deeper than anything that has yet been written on the subject."--Dale Jamieson, author of Reason in a Dark Time: Why the Struggle to Stop Climate Change Failed--And What It Means For Our Future "As a motivator, the concept Life hasn't been working out so great, hardwired as it is into the post-Neolithic drive to exist no matter what the quality of that existence. Life won't help you to live. Including ecological awareness in our political decisions means including as much death in as many different modes (psychic, philosophical, social) as we can manage. Roy Scranton has written an essential recipe book for adding some death to the bland, oppressive and ecologically disastrous human cake."--Timothy Morton, author of Ecology without Nature: Rethinking Environmental Aesthetics "In the brief but crowded pages of Learning to Die in the Anthropocene, Iraq War veteran, Roy Scranton, wields both history and philosophy as forensic tools. With the unblinking eyes of a medical examiner, he systematically reveals the causes, trajectory and outcome of our planetary domination and its subsequent climate crisis. Slicing away obscuring adipose tissue of romanticism on the left and denial on the right, he pinpoints the source of the corpse's demise."--Jose Knighton, Weller Book Works' Newsletter "Scranton has always been a few steps ahead of other veteran-authors... Learning to Die in the Anthropocene casts a beautiful allure."--Peter Molin, Time Now "Scranton's book has its own kind of power... There is something cathartic about his refusal to shy away from the full scope of our predicament."--Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow, The Los Angeles Review of Books "This is a small book with big ideas from an Army veteran who views the flooding after Hurricane Katrina and sees 'the same chaos and collapse I'd seen in Baghdad.' Scranton brings meaning and humor to the mayhem."--J. Ford Huffman, The Military Times "With clarity and conviction, Scranton explores the global failure to address the climate crisis and the possibility that the planet could become uninhabitable. Referring to classic texts as far back as The Epic of Gilgamesh, he urges readers to face their fear of death and find guidance in literature as they prepare for and adapt to the future. The book is an unapologetic punch in the gut, likely to leave many readers gasping. Scranton does offer a kind of hope: By making tough accommodations and reconnecting with our core humanity, we may eventually be able to recover our collective breath."--Michael Berry, Sierra Magazine " ... Scranton's book is a very well researched investigation into our troubled future. Scranton doesn't sugar coat his findings, 'We are f*cked' as he so bluntly puts it. And indeed with the rise in global temperatures set to soar in the next fifty years bringing with it melting ice caps, rising seas, a toxic cocktail of carbon dioxide and methane that has remained locked in the permafrost for centuries, no argument can be made against Scranton's statement."--Stephen Lee Naish, Hong Kong Review of Books