You Are Here

Exposing the Vital Link Between What We Do and What That Does to Our Planet

By: Thomas M. Kostigen

Narrated by: Thomas M. Kostigen

“A passionate and heartfelt call to care.”
—Bruce Feiler, New York Times bestselling author of Walking the Bible and America’s Prophet

In You Are Here, Thomas Kostigen, the New York Times bestselling co-author of The Green Book, takes us to the most extreme environmental areas on the planet to show how what we do from the comfort of our own home affects people, places, and things everywhere. A timely, much-needed alarm that recalls Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth combined with a compelling travel narrative reminiscent of Anthony Bourdain with straight ahead Anderson Cooper-like reporting, You Are Here is “an intriguing and insightful account that deserves to be read by everyone” (Mark Plotkin, Time Magazine Hero for the Planet).

You can have an impact book

So why this book over other environmental books? Tom does an exceptional job bringing home the affect of our local actions on the rest of the world and the effect of others on the US. The book does not just address the issues from the security of an office but rather Tom takes the reader to the hot spots around the world. He looks at a lot of issues that are known. What is not know is how exactly our action affect the word. For instance, what would happen if I reused each plastic bottle of water just once? If we all did this the impact would be substantial. The book is not another droning "humans bad" environmental book. It is a "you can have an impact and do so easily book. I highly recommend the book. I will probably use it in my next conservation class. The recording itself is excellent and as Tom reads it, the annunciation matches the authors feeling. Narrating the obvious concerns of author facing surgery via machete in the middle of the rainforest can only be properly conveyed by the author himself.

A fun journey

This book was pretty interesting; some great statistics, though not so many that it was overwhelming. An easy read- I just wish it was longer!

Inspirational in a way I did not expect

If you could sum up You Are Here in three words, what would they be?

Thoughtful. Thoughtful. Thoughtful.

What was one of the most memorable moments of You Are Here?

His descriptions of how the distribution of garbage works. How computers from the LA schools sit in land fills in India, and how something like 25% of the polution in LA is from China.

He creates a whole picture .... but it is not dark, morbid and fanatic. It is thoughtful and well informed. Simple and to the point.

What does the narrator bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

not sure

If you were to make a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

Garbage, without judgement

Any additional comments?

I highly recommend this book. Growing up on a farm, I am very aware of what comes around goes around. I am also aware, that to go to one extreme or the other is pointless. I would never not use antibiotics when an animal was sick, nor would I keep the animals constantly on antibiotics so that I could keep them in unhealthy conditions.

This book finds just that balance