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	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Annelie Geissler

CARBON

Paul Hawken

The Book of Life

A journey into the world of carbon, the most versatile element on the planet, by the New York Times bestselling author Paul Hawken

Carbon is the only element that animates the entirety of the living world. Though comprising a tiny fraction of Earth's composition, our planet is lifeless without it. Yet it is maligned as the driver of climate change, scorned as an errant element blamed for the possible demise of civilization. Here, Paul Hawken looks at the flow of life through the lens of carbon. Embracing a panoramic view of carbon's omnipresence, he explores how this ubiquitous and essential element extends into every aperture of existence and shapes the entire fabric of life. Hawken charts a course across our planetary history, guiding us into the realms of plants, animals, insects, fungi, food, and farms to offer a new narrative for embracing carbon's life-giving power and its possibilities for the future of human endeavor. In this stirring, hopeful, and deeply humane book, Hawken illuminates the subtle connections between carbon and our collective human experience and asks us to see nature, carbon, and ourselves as exquisitely intertwinedinseparably connected. Paul Hawken is an author and activist. He has founded successful, ecologically-conscious businesses, and consulted with heads of state and CEOs on economic development, industrial ecology, and environmental policy. He has written seven books including four national bestsellers: The Next Economy, Growing a Business, and The Ecology of Commerce, and Blessed Unrest. The Ecology of Commerce was voted as the #1 college text on business and the environment by professors in 67 business schools. Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution, co-authored with Amory Lovins, has been referred to by several heads of state including President Bill Clinton who called it one of the most important books in the world at that time. He has served on the board of many environmental organizations including Center for Plant Conservation, Shelburne Farms, Trust for Public Land, Conservation International, and National Audubon Society.

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Book Published 2025-03-18 by Viking Books

Comments

Paul Hawken writes beautifully about the situation we face here on our planet. Using carbon, life's central element, as a major theme, his eloquence and point of view are insightful, powerful, and important.

Hawken takes his readers on an awe-inspiring adventure through forests, galaxies, and the soil microbiome, reminding us that balancing the carbon cycle is not an abstract question of atmospheric chemistry but the intimate everyday matter of healing relationships with our wondrous kin in this living world.

The life-giving element carbon moves ceaselessly between the biosphere and the atmosphere. It can either unravel civilization or renew it. If one form of carbon, fossil fuel emissions, are not rapidly curtailed, our way of life will collapse. The must-read Carbon: The Book of Life describes how the climate crisis invites us to change our behavior, reject business as usual, and restore the health of our astonishing planet.

Paul Hawken's Carbon: The Book of Life has created what might be termed the first spiritual encyclopedia of the Earth highlighting and blue-printing the myriad umbilical connections between life and non-life, harmonizing to make life on this planet the mysterious wonder that it is. That he manages the tour de force using extraordinary amounts of empirically verifiable data to reveal how nearly every current proposal of "Planet Salvage" is a masquerade shifting power to the extractive and profit-seeking practices that created these problems in the first place is nothing less than stunning. He demonstrates again and again, with myriad examples, how the Earth, herself, is begging us to recreate the original balances we've destroyed. With that simple practice, the Planet will recover without vast corporate schemes to pump liquid carbon into underground caverns or a 'new generation' of nuclear power plants. If you don't believe he's pulled this off, poetically, balletically, and with intellectual rigor, read this book and try to prove me wrong.

Paul Hawken's powerful new book mirrors the profound beauty that can save our world. Most books view carbon as a culprit. Hawken reminds us that carbon is the source of all planetary life. If you are looking for hopefor a way past climate denial and despairCarbon is a must-read.

Imagine putting on a pair of glasses that suddenly revealed the world as a fabric woven of miracles. Carbon reads like an extended love poem about life's most basic chemical. Here, 'Carbon's dance of life does not take sides; it is never right or wrong.' In Paul Hawken's telling, carbon might just be the sexiest element, 'available, loyal, and fickle in its versatility.' In Hawken's hands and in these pages, the chemistry is always right.

Japanese: Yama-Kei ; UK & C: Text ; Korean: Woongjin

Paul Hawken invites us to see the connections that bind us to everything else on the planet. Carbon is an enormously hopeful bookhopeful about the creatures we live among and about our innate human capacities.

Paul Hawken's Carbon is a profound exploration of the most essential element of life and its impact on the planet. This book is not just about the science of carbon; it's a call to action and a vision for how we can shift our thinking to embrace a regenerative, life-affirming path. With a deep understanding of ecology, economics, and the interconnectedness of all living systems, Paul masterfully illustrates how carbon's journey through our biosphere is both a warning and an opportunity. For anyone passionate about the health of our planet and our collective future, Carbon is an essential read that will inspire and empower you to become a steward of the earth and a champion for change.

Endlessly endlessly fascinating! Human beings, over the millennia, have come up with a thousand ways to carefully observe the world around us, and Paul Hawken has managed to collect and synthesize these observations--from the sweat lodge to the satellitein a way that helps us see what now must be done. There's information, and then there's wisdomand this book is a compendium of the latter.

Deep into Carbon: The Book of Life, I felt that Paul Hawken has created a perfect balance between HUGE planetary blessings and HUGE planetary threats. I've loved all of his books, but this one is a bible for survival I'm finding so desperately needed that the writing strikes me as beyond belief, transcendent, and dazzlingly poetic because Mother Earth and her miracle element, carbon itself, are dazzlingly poetic. This work left me bursting with fresh hope.