Passionate, succinct, chilling, closely argued, sometimes hilarious, touchingly well-intentioned, and essential.” —Margaret Atwood, The New York Review of Books

Nearly fifteen years ago, in The End of Nature, Bill McKibben demonstrated that humanity had begun to irrevocably alter and endanger our environment on a global scale. Now he turns his eye to an array of technologies that could change our relationship not with the rest of nature but with ourselves. He explores the frontiers of genetic engineering, robotics, and nanotechnology—all of which we are approaching with astonishing speed—and shows that each threatens to take us past a point of no return. We now stand, in Michael Pollan’s words, “on a moral and existential threshold,” poised between the human past and a post-human future. McKibben offers a celebration of what it means to be human, and a warning that we risk the loss of all meaning if we step across the threshold. Instantly acclaimed for its passion and insight, this wise and eloquent book argues that we cannot forever grow in reach and power—that we must at last learn how to say, “Enough.”

“Bill McKibben has produced a book that is both a sequel and an equal to his brilliant The End of Nature. Enough is an ambitious and important book.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review

“Without question, this is one of the most important books of the year. McKibben deserves to be read, to be discussed, to be heard.” —San Diego Union-Tribune

“[A] brave and luminous book . . . Bill McKibben understands genetics—but he knows poetry, too.” —David Gelernter, Wired

“Bill McKibben has done a top-notch job of researching and writing about one of the most important topics of the current age. Enough is an important book and needs to be read by everyone with an interest in keeping the human future human.” —The Weekly Standard

“Fiercely important . . . the most thought-provoking piece of non-fiction I’ve read in a long time.” —The Globe and Mail (Toronto)

“In this wise, well-researched, and important book, Bill McKibben addresses the burning philosophical question of the new century, and the one that counts for the long haul: how to control the technoscientific juggernaut before it dehumanizes our species.” —E. O. Wilson, author of The Future of Life

“In Enough, McKibben shines his powerful light on another momentous change that is upon us: the ability to re-engineer ourselves and therefore the very meaning of human identity. If he is right, then humankind stands on a moral and existential threshold—or cliff. We would do well as a society to weigh his bracing argument before taking another step.” —Michael Pollan, author of The Botany of Desire

Bill McKibben writes regularly for The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, Natural History, The New Republic, and many other publications. His first book, The End of Nature, was published in 1989 after being excerpted in The New Yorker and was a national bestseller. His other books include The Age of Missing Information, Maybe One, and Long Distance: A Year of Living Strenuously. He lives with his wife, the writer Sue Halpern, and daughter in Vermont.

From Enough:

What will you have done to your newborn when you have installed into the nucleus of every one of her billions of cells a purchased code that will pump out proteins designed to change her? You will have robbed her of the last possible chance for creating context—meaning—for her life. Say she finds herself, at the age of sixteen, unaccountably happy. Is it her being happy—finding, perhaps, the boy she will first love—or is it the corporate product inserted within her when she was a small nest of cells, an artificial chromosome now causing her body to produce more serotonin? Don’t think she won’t wonder: at sixteen a sensitive soul questions everything. But perhaps you’ve “increased her intelligence”—and perhaps that’s why she is questioning so hard. She won’t be sure if even the questions are hers.

Imprint: Holt Paperbacks
Distributor: MPS
Publication Date: 02-01-2004
Pages: 288
Measurements: 8.25in X 5.50in