Nathaniel Rich is the author of the novels Odds Against Tomorrow and The Mayor's Tongue. His short fiction has appeared in McSweeney's, The Virginia Quarterly Review, and VICE, among other publications. He is a writer at large for The New York Times Magazine and a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books and The Atlantic. Rich lives with his wife and son in New Orleans.

Introduction - i: Introduction Unit - ii: Part I: Shouts in the Street:1979-1982 Chapter - 1: The Whole Banana: Spring 1979 Chapter - 2: Mirror Worlds: Spring 1979 Chapter - 3: Between Clambake and Chaos: July 1979 Chapter - 4: Enter Cassandra, Raving: 1979-1980 Chapter - 5: A Very Aggressive Defensive Program: 1979-1980 Chapter - 6: Tiger on the Road: October 1980 Chapter - 7: A Deluge Most Unnatural: November 1980-September 1981 Chapter - 8: Heroes and Villains: March 1982 Chapter - 9: The Direction of an Impending Catastrophe: 1982 Unit - iii: Part II: Bad Science Fiction: 1983-1988 Chapter - 10: Caution Not Panic: 1983-1984 Chapter - 11: The World of Action: 1985 Chapter - 12: The Ozone in October: Fall 1985-Summer 1986 Chapter - 13: Atmospheric Scientist, New York, N.Y.: Fall 1987-Spring 1988 Unit - iv: Part III: You Will See Things That You Shall Believe: 1988-1989 Chapter - 14: Nothing but Bonfires: Summer 1988 Chapter - 15: Signal Weather: June 1988 Chapter - 16: Woodstock for Climate Change: June 1988-April 1989 Chapter - 17: Fragmented World: Fall 1988 Chapter - 18: The Great Includer and the Old Engineer: Spring 1989 Chapter - 19: Natural Processes: May 1989 Chapter - 20: The White House Effect: Fall 1989 Chapter - 21: Skunks at the Garden Party: November 1989 Section - v: Afterword: Glass-Bottomed Boats Section - vi: A Note on the Sources Acknowledgements - vii: Acknowledgements

'Nathaniel Rich's account starts in Washington in the 1990s and tells the story of how climate change could have been stopped back then, if only the powerful had acted. But they didn't want to.' Observer
By 1979, we knew all that we know now about the science of climate change - what was happening, why it was happening, and how to stop it. Over the next ten years, we had the very real opportunity to stop it. Obviously, we failed. Nathaniel Rich tells the essential story of why and how, thanks to the actions of politicians and businessmen, that failure came about. It is crucial to an understanding of where we are today.
'The excellent and appalling Losing Earth by Nathaniel Rich describes how close we came in the 70s to dealing with the causes of global warming and how US big business and Reaganite politicians in the 80s ensured it didn't happen. Read it.' John Simpson
'An eloquent science history, and an urgent eleventh-hour call to save what can be saved.' Nature
'To change the future, we must first understand our past, and Losing Earth is a crucial part of that when it comes to the environmental battles we're facing.' Stylist