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Second Nature

From the author of Losing Earth, a beautifully told exploration of our post-natural world that points the way to a new mode of ecological writing.

We live at a time in which scientists race to reanimate extinct beasts, our most essential ecosystems require monumental engineering projects to survive, chicken breasts grow in test tubes, and multinational corporations conspire to poison the blood of every living creature. No rock, leaf, or cubic foot of air on Earth has escaped humanity’s clumsy signature. The old distinctions—between natural and artificial, dystopia and utopia, science fiction and science fact—have blurred, losing all meaning. We inhabit an uncanny landscape of our own creation.

Nathaniel Rich is the author of Losing Earth: A Recent History (MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019), a finalist for the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Award, and a winner of awards from the Society of Environmental Journalists and the American Institute of Physics. He is also the author of the novels King Zeno (MCD/FSG, 2018); Odds Against Tomorrow (FSG, 2013); and The Mayor’s Tongue (Riverhead, 2008). Rich’s short fiction has been published by McSweeney’sEsquireVice, The Virginia Quarterly Review, and The American Scholar; he was awarded the 2017 Emily Clark Balch Prize for Fiction and is a two-time finalist for the National Magazine Award for Fiction.