New Ruins: The Story of the World in 21 Abandoned and Collapsing Places

This is the age of ruins. The wrecks of our speeding, super-sizing, impatient era can be found on the Moon and at the bottom of the sea, in the internet’s haunted attics, in desecrated jungles and in abandoned shopping malls inhabited by dust and spiders.We live amid the accumulating debris of an economy that can’t stop producing, building and digging, creating mountains of stuff, little of which lasts very long.The old ruins, those pleasant antiquities, blocks of Sun-warmed marble wedged in romantic sands, are reassuring, and speak of a time when clocks turned slowly.The ruins of the industrial era, old brick-built factories, seem equally distant.They are sweetly melancholic: the wind pushes one last squeak from a rusty wheel and corridors echo with memories of heavy, well-oiled machines.The old ruins appeal to us because we’re nostalgic for a world that was less frantic.We like to be fooled that ruins are from the past when, in fact, they describe our present. This is a book about 21