The Way We Live Now -- A Few Rocks from the Box -- When Darkness Casts a Hard and Pitiless Light -- American History Backward -- Vietnam as Simulacrum -- Is Civilization Too Dumb to Live? -- Eating with Peter Singer -- Resort Life -- The Unconscious and the Dead -- The Way We Live Now, Again

"A brilliantly written, deeply thoughtful, and even humorous book about a very dark topic. I hope civilization will last long enough for it to be published for all to enjoy and contemplate."-Paul R. Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb. Written with clarity, tenacity, humor, and warmth, A Hundred Little Pieces on the End of the World attempts to find tolerable ethical positions in the face of barely tolerable events-and the real possibility of an intolerable future. It is a compelling, surprising, disturbing, and highly literate work of reportage and contemplation. It is both a collection of gentle-spirited wisdom and a rumination on ruin, as if distilled in equal measure from the spirits of Norman MacLean's A River Runs Through It and Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Through these ten essays, each further broken into ten smaller pieces, Rember examines the practical and ethical dilemmas of climate change, population, resource depletion, and mass extinction. At the same time, he never forgets those improbable connections between human beings that lead to moments of joy, empathy, and grace"-- Provided by publisher.