Jake Bittle is a journalist based in Brooklyn who covers climate change and energy. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Harper’s Magazine, and a number of other publications. He is also a contributing writer for Grist.
"We know what climate change will do, now, if not precisely its
scale. But we don't yet see clearly just what it will do to us--our
families and communities and homesteads, not mention our politics
and culture. Jake Bittle's The Great Displacement is a bracing,
vivid tour of the new human geography just coming into view and
warning us of what's to come."
--David Wallace-Wells, New York Times bestselling author of The
Uninhabitable Earth "Jake Bittle travels from Florida to California
to see how climate change is already altering people's lives. The
Great Displacement is closely observed, compassionate, and
far-sighted."
--Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer-Prize winning author of Under a White
Sky "It's hard to imagine a more timely book--as climate chaos
gathers momentum, more and more people are forced to make the
hardest of human decisions: to leave home and make a new life
elsewhere. This deeply-reported account brings those stories to
life, and with them a host of policy choices that could make this
new era a little less disastrous."
--Bill McKibben, author Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play
Itself Out? "Jake Bittle draws close to those communities that are
being fundamentally reshaped by climate change and he sticks
around, long after the disaster declarations are over, to ask one
of our era's most pressing questions: when we are forced to leave
the places that have long defined us, what will we encounter on the
other side?"
--Elizabeth Rush, author of Rising: Dispatches from the New
American Shore "Until now, the word 'displaced, ' has never been
strong enough to accurately conjure up what it really means: people
driven from their homes, but not out of their countries, by the
disruptive forces of climate-driven disasters. America already has
millions of such people. We can't call them 'refugees' because
they're still here in America. Jake Bittle has found a way to bring
us their individual accounts to tell the larger story of a failing
system--extreme weather, government error and inaction, and
corporate and individual greed have come together to drive an
unfolding catastrophe, which already impacts us all."
--Eliza Griswold, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Amity and
Prosperity "[Bittle is] an empathetic writer, but also one with a
real gift for explaining the fraught issues--economic, scientific,
political--that make the climate crisis and its effect on the
population so complex. It sometimes feels too pat to call a book
'necessary, ' but this one really is."
--NPR "Roving across the United States, this survey explores the
precarious environments in which many Americans now live, places
irreversibly altered by floods, fires, hurricanes, and
drought...Bittle argues that the approaches of both government and
the insurance industry are totally inadequate for today's dilemmas:
Where should we build? What should we protect? And what do we owe
those who lose everything?"
--The New Yorker "The foregrounding of individual voices adds to
the book's power and sense of urgency, and Bittle is an expert
explainer of policy matters...A captivating look at a pressing
issue."
--Publishers Weekly, starred review "Urgent, perceptive...a
simultaneously fascinating and unnerving report brilliantly
delivered."
--Kirkus Weekly, starred review "Bittle provides vivid descriptions
and accessible technical explanations, but the most powerful parts
of his narrative detail the lives of the individuals...He poses
disturbing questions: where are all these uprooted people supposed
to go?...Powerful and moving."
--Booklist, starred review "A superb storyteller, Bittle is at his
finest as a chronicler of the loss of place and the sense of
belonging, and the frustration that financial constraints pose for
the victims of natural disasters."
--The American Prospect "Bittle's narratives treat the retelling of
his characters' losses with careful compassion and meticulous
documentation. He gets to know the families evicted from their
homes and derailed from their goals by increasingly regular
unnatural disasters. He is privy to their agonizing debates over
when to stay, when to go and whether to declare bankruptcy when
flood insurance premiums shoot through their soggy roofs. In
between these heart-wrenching tales, his book's backbone charts the
long course of underlying injustices, negligent zoning,
shortsighted policies and climate inaction that have engineered
these housing dilemmas more Americans will soon face."
--Arizona Republic "Through deeply reported pieces, Bittle deftly
balances attention to each displaced family's story with larger
structural analyses. To read about people from different states and
socioeconomic backgrounds is to be reminded that, on a
fast-overheating planet, we are all caught up in the same
ecological web. Sooner or later, it will be our turn to move."
--High Country News "Bittle has overcome the great difficulty in
writing about environmental crises: in many cases, the story
becomes so depressing that readers turn away in despair. In this
valuable, well-written book, which breaks new ground, he seamlessly
blends an expert, policy-level treatment of the causes and
consequences of the displacement of Americans being driven by
climate change with a narrative of the often heart-rending impacts
on particular individuals."
--Foreign Affairs "In the stories Bittle has collected, we are able
to see human nature unveiled to a raw and essential state...One
can't read The Great Displacement and deny the insecurity and
misery climate change has already wrought on American families and
communities."
--Undark Magazine
 |
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
|
