NCSE is pleased to offer a free preview (PDF) of Charles H. Langmuir and Wally Broecker's How to Build a Habitable Planet: The Story of Earth from the Big Bang to Humankind (Princeton University Press, 2012). The preview consists of chapter 20, "Mankind at the Helm: Human Civilization in a Planetary Context," in which Langmuir and Broecker write, "Because of our influence, we live in a time of profound and rapid planetary change. Human actions have modified climate and the oceans and may end in global catastrophe, not only for other species but also for our own."
A thoroughly revised and generously expanded edition of the classic introduction to the origin and evolution of our planet, How to Build a Habitable Planet was praised by the reviewer for Nature Geoscience as "a completely different book, wholly updated but also more detailed and more comprehensive. Yet, it keeps the bright flavour of the old version, and remains accessible without compromising on accuracy." Charles H. Langmuir is the Higgins Professor of Geochemistry at Harvard University; Wally Broecker is the Newberry Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University.