The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet

The Anthropocene Reviewed started as a podcast, but the essays are considerably more developed in book form. John Green takes subjects—a specific type of grass, a Dr. Pepper flavor, the Indianapolis Colts’ season—and gives each a star rating, a rubric that sounds absurd until you realize he’s using it as a scaffold for genuine thinking about beauty, grief, meaning, and what humans have made of the planet. The writing is personal without being self-indulgent; Green is honest about his own mental health struggles, his relationship with his hometown, his love of things that don’t obviously deserve love. The book doesn’t have an argument, exactly—it accumulates instead, each essay adding weight to a loosely held position about gratitude and complexity. Readers who want rigorous nonfiction may find it too casual. Readers who want something that makes them feel less alone in being human will find it unexpectedly effective.