Footprints

A profound meditation on climate change and the Anthropocene and an urgent search for the fossils—industrial, chemical, geological—that humans are leaving behind
A Times Book of the Year • A Daily Telegraph Book of the Year

Reviews

‘Fascinating’ Margaret Atwood on twitter
‘What do we owe to the world that comes after us? In this superbly researched and imagined book, David Farrier invites us to expand our sense of deep time to include the deep future’ Caspar Henderson, author of A New Map of Wonders
‘Footprints bears witness to the hastening catastrophe of the Anthropocene, illustrating not just the permanence of the traces humans leave behind, but also the impermanence of the human. Profound, urgent, transformative, it is a remarkable book.’ James Bradley, author of Ghost Species
‘Mr Farrier’s prose glitters … As Mr Farrier notes, even if pollution and consumption ceased tomorrow, their effects would take millennia to unwind. Human life is etched into the fossil record for aeons to come. “The challenge is to learn…to examine our present by the eerie light cast by the onrushing future.” His subtle, elegant book rises to that challenge’ Economist
‘It is an oddly hopeful exploration of deep time and a world doing just fine without us.’ New Scientist
‘Farrier races through the past and makes brief stops in the present before soaring into the deep future, all the while exploring our capacity as human beings to leave traces behind us … It echoes many of the concerns of nature writers such as Kathleen Jamie, Katharine Norbury and Robert Macfarlane, but from a different coign of vantage. Farrier is less nature writer an more ‘smart thinker’ … At its best, there are moments when the eye of the poet and the analyst come together in memorable flight’ Literary Review
‘All decent people want to be remembered well. In the ancient world, moral life was often seen as the effort to be a good ancestor. If that’s how you see things, David Farrier’s brilliant, plangent book will leave you gasping with shame. Our grandchildren (if any survive) will look back on us with contempt’ The Oldie, Charles Foster