David Wallace-Wells Audiobooks

The Uninhabitable Earth: the climate book that made the worst case impossible to ignore

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Who is David Wallace-Wells?

It began with a magazine article that nobody could stop arguing about. In July 2017 David Wallace-Wells, then deputy editor at New York magazine, published a piece on worst-case climate outcomes that became the most-read article in the magazine’s history, drawing immediate fire from scientists who thought it too bleak and gratitude from readers who felt somebody had finally said it plainly.

Born in New York City in 1982, Wallace-Wells has spent his career in the space between science and public argument: first at New York magazine, where he also covered the pandemic closely, and since 2022 at The New York Times, writing a weekly column and long essays for the magazine. He was a National Fellow at New America in 2019.

His position has shifted with the evidence, which is to his credit. He writes now with more emphasis on what the coming decades might still be steered towards, while refusing the comfort of pretending the range of possible outcomes is narrow.

David Wallace-Wells in audiobooks

Wallace-Wells reads The Uninhabitable Earth himself, across eight and a half hours, and the choice earns itself. Authors narrating their own non-fiction can go either way, but this is essentially an argument being pressed, and the urgency in the voice is not performed.

The structure is what makes it hold. A relentless opening sequence of cascading consequences, heat and hunger, drowning and wildfire, foul air and plagues, is followed by chapters that step back to ask why we struggle to think about any of it at all. The second half is the part most listeners remember.

The 2019 book grew out of that original article, and it remains a demanding listen rather than a comforting one, which is precisely its value. If you want the case laid out without hedging, it is waiting below.