Project Overview

UC MERCED'S COMMON READ PROGRAM is designed to enchance the campus's already strong sense of community, as well as to provide an introduction to academic life. This book, in whole or part, is required reading in general education and writing courses (Core 1, Writing 10) and recommended reading in other first-year classes. It will be the subject of university-wide events, including a film series, faculty symposium and guest lectures. We encourage you to share the book with your family and friends, and seek opportunities to discuss the text outside of class. Most of all, we hope you enjoy reading the book and making it a part of scholarly inquiry at UC Merced.

The World Without Us, as the book's website tells us, documents “how our planet would respond without the pressure of the human presence”—surveying such subjects as “how our massive infrastructure would collapse and finally vanish without human presence; what of our everyday stuff may become immortalized as fossils; how copper pipes and wiring would be crushed into mere seams of reddish rock; why some of our earliest buildings might be the last architecture left; and how plastic, bronze sculpture, radio waves, and some man-made molecules may be our most lasting gifts to the universe.” The journey is a rewarding one that poses interesting questions about our relationship to the environments in which we live.