The Fate of the Earth. This item is unavailable.The Fate of the Earth

Schell, Jonathan. The Fate of the Earth. [Signed / Inscribed] First Edition. New York, Knopf, 1982. 21.7cm x 15cm. 244 pages. Original Hardcover in original dustjacket. In protective Mylar. Very good in publisher's cloth covered boards, in like dust jacket. Beautiful, lengthy inscription by Schell to the previous owner, Northeastern Univeristy philosophy Professor Dr. Hugh Moorehead. This book may someday be looked back upon as a crucial event in the history of human thought. It may mark the moment at which man wrenched himself free from the psychological habits of pre-nuclear times, permitted the nuclear predicament to take hold in his consciousness, roused himself to confront the stark fact that his species was in imminent danger of extinguishing itself, and began to act to avert a final, absurd, irreversible, boundless calamity. Schell has taken upon himself the task of speaking for man, and of acting for man, and it can be hoped that what he has written here will lead the way for many. This monumental work first appeared in three issues of The New Yorker, and was quickly recognized throughout the country-indeed, through the Western world- as the definitive statement on our plight. In defining the shape and the dimensions of the nuclear predicament, Schell describes, within the limits of what is dependable and unarguably known to science, a full-scale nuclear holocaust. He describes the countless, overlapping ways- a paroxysm of redundancy- in which human beings and other creatures of the earth would die if the existing twenty thousand megatons of bombs (with more than a million times the explosive power of the Hiroshima bomb) should ever fall. In moderate tones but in unforgettable particulars, he tells us how the world would end.

" As always, Schell is interesting and ingenious and sometimes moving." -- "New Republic"

" This is a work of enormous force. . . . It compels us-- and compel is the right word-- to confront head-on the nuclear peril." -- "New York Times Book Review"

"As always, Schell is interesting and ingenious and sometimes moving."--"New Republic"

"This is a work of enormous force. . . . It compels us--and compel is the right word--to confront head-on the nuclear peril."--"New York Times Book Review"

This is a work of enormous force. . . . It compels usand compel is the right wordto confront head-on the nuclear peril. "New York Times Book Review""

As always, Schell is interesting and ingenious and sometimes moving. "New Republic""