Rising

“Sea level rise is not some distant problem in a distant place. As Elizabeth Rush shows, it’s affecting real people right now. Rising is a compelling piece of reporting, by turns bleak and beautiful.”

“Rising is a smart, lyrical testament to change and uncertainty. Elizabeth Rush listens to both the vulnerability and resiliency of communities facing the shifting shorelines of extreme weather. These are the stories we need to hear in order to survive and live more consciously with a sharp-edged determination to face our future with empathy and resolve. Rising illustrates how climate change is a relentless truth and how real people in real places know it by name, storm by flood by fire.”

“The book on climate change and sea levels that was missing. Elizabeth Rush travels from vanishing shorelines in New England to hurting fishing communities to retracting islands and, with empathy and elegance, conveys what it means to lose a world in slow motion. Picture the working-class empathy of Studs Terkel paired with the heartbreak of a poet.”

“A vivid and urgent piece of reportage about coastal change and denial.”

“With tasteful and dynamic didactic language, [Rush] informs the layperson about the imminent threat of climate change while grounding the massive scope of the problem on heartfelt human and interspecies connection.”

“Moving and urgent … Elizabeth Rush’s Rising: Dispatches From the New American Shore is a revelation… . The project of Rising, like the project of Matthew Desmond’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, is to draw attention to ongoing material crisis through the stories of the people who are surviving within it. Rising is a clarion call. The idea isn’t merely that climate change is here and scary. There’s a more important message: There are people out here who need help.”

“Timely and urgent, this report on how climate change is affecting American shorelines provides critical evidence of the devastating changes already faced by some coastal dwellers. Elizabeth Rush masterfully presents firsthand accounts of these changes… In the midst of a highly politicized debate on climate change and how to deal with its far-reaching effects, this book deserves to be read by all.”

“Elizabeth Rush traffics only sparingly in doomsday statistics. For Rush, the devastating impact of rising sea levels, especially on vulnerable communities, is more compellingly found in the details. From Louisiana to Staten Island to the Bay Area, Rush’s lyrical, deeply reported essays challenge us to accept the uncertainty of our present climate and to consider more just ways of dealing with the immense challenges ahead.”

“In this moving and memorable book, the voice of the author mingles with the voices of people in coastal communities all over the country—Maine, Rhode Island, Louisiana, Florida, New York, California—to offer testimony: The water is rising. Some have already lost their homes; some will soon; others are studying or watching or grieving. Though they haven’t met each other, their commonality forms a circle into which we are inexorably pulled by Elizabeth Rush’s powerful words.”

“[A book] that will stay long with me… . Elizabeth Rush’s innovative, brave Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore is about the changing coastlines of America in a time of climate breakdown, and part of a growing wave of what might be called Anthropocene nonfiction, seeking to find a form for the challenges of our epoch.”

“This is narrative nonfiction at its best. Rush not only explains the science of sea level rise and the ways in which coastlines can be made more resistant to climate change. She also connects personally with people in flood zones, many of them economically or racially marginalized… . She also exposes the problems inherent in regulatory programs like the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), that ‘require [those with insurance] to rebuild in place, even when that place has been underwater repeatedly in the past.’”

“[Rush’s] work does something that other superb science writing on climate change does not: It brings a poetic feeling and personal narrative to the subject. Her warm and informed presence is felt throughout Rising — a reminder that now more than ever we need the storytelling skills of nature writers to engage people and change policies given these pressing environmental times.”

“The personal stories are compelling, the prose is exquisite… . If you read only one nonfiction book this year, make this The One: I guarantee you’ll never see the world the same way again.”

“The strength of [Rising] lies not only in the pulse and momentum of her prose but in the relationships she built while writing it: relationships with scientists and with the many people whose homes are already underwater. Rush is an unusually courageous individual, and the book reverberates with heart. It helps us both to grapple with the mourning we must do as the holocene crumbles around us, and to do the radical work of imagining a way forward.”