The Vanishing Earth

Dispatches From the Frontiers of Extraction

By: James Crawford

"Crawford belongs with other storyteller-explorers—strolling player-writers like Iain Sinclair, Rebecca Solnit, and Robert Macfarlane—who are stretching naturalist observation into incisive cultural inquiry.... Riveting." --NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS

"Crawford is at his best when surrendering to his propensity for reverie, an irrepressible, almost romantic sense of wonder that drives the reader from chapter to chapter." --WASHINGTON POST

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 listeners 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.

©2026 James Crawford (P)2026 Bloomsbury Publishing Plc