Before It's Gone: Stories from the Front Lines of Climate Change in Small-Town America

by Jonathan Vigliotti

Overview

This “stunning call to action to save ourselves and all life on the planet” (Booklist), in the vein of This Changes Everything and Saving Us, effortlessly demonstrates how climate change is affecting America right now.

Discussion of the climate crisis has always suffered from a problem of abstraction. Data points and warnings of an overheated future struggle to break through the noise of everyday life. Deniers often portray climate solutions as inconvenient, expensive, and unnecessary. And many politicians, cloistered by status and focused always on their next election, do not yet see climate as a winning issue in the short run. But climate change is here whether we want to pay attention or not.

CBS News national correspondent Jonathan Vigliotti has personally witnessed that crisis unfold, spending nearly two decades reporting across the United States (and the world) documenting the people, communities, landmarks, and traditions we’ve already surrendered. Vigliotti shares with urgency and personal touch the story of an America on the brink.

This “page-turning tour de force” (Steve Brusatte, New York Times bestselling author) traces Vigliotti’s travels across the country, taking him to the frontlines of climate disaster and revealing the genuine impacts of climate change that countless Americans have already been forced to confront. From massive forest fires in California to hurricanes in Louisiana, receding coastlines in Massachusetts and devastated fisheries in Alaska, we learn that warnings of a future impacted by climate are no more; the climate catastrophe is already here.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781668008171
Publisher:	Atria/One Signal Publishers
Publication date:	04/02/2024
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	97,619
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Jonathan Vigliotti is an Emmy and Edward R. Murrow Award–winning CBS News national correspondent whose work has appeared on numerous platforms including CBS Sunday Morning, Face the Nation, 48 Hours, and more. His reporting has taken him to more than forty countries and territories across six continents. Follow him on X @JonVigliotti. Before It’s Gone is his first book.

Editorial Reviews

02/26/2024

CBS News correspondent Vigliotti debuts with a vivid report on how climate change is ravaging communities across the country. Vigliotti pairs profiles of ordinary people whose lives have been affected by severe weather with scientific context. For instance, the author describes the devastation felt by a Louisiana couple after Hurricane Laura knocked a tree into their home, fatally crushing their 14-year-old daughter, and explains that melting arctic ice sheets are reducing the salinity of the ocean, causing water to evaporate more quickly and enhancing storms’ intensity. Vigliotti’s other subjects include an elementary school teacher who fled Paradise, Calif., after the 2018 Camp Fire destroyed her home, and the operator of a suicide helpline for farmers, who are increasingly driven to despair by feeble harvests diminished by drought. There are some glimmers of hope amid the gloom, as when Vigliotti details how conservationists’ efforts to bolster the beaver population are helping ecosystems around the animals’ dams become more fire resistant. The prose is transportive (“Through a strip of lush vegetation and vapor that curtained the coast, we discovered a miles-long field of smoldering ash and twisted metal,” Vigliotti writes about arriving in Lahaina to report on Maui’s 2023 wildfires), and the stirring portraits ground the climate science. Disquieting and thoroughly reported, this unsettles. Agent: David Black, David Black Agency. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

[Before It's Gone] melds profiles and scientific data to highlight the human impact of climate change in locales across the country, from Louisiana to Maui.”
—The New York Times Book Review

“As a CBS News correspondent, Jonathan Vigliotti has rushed into fires, floods, and war zones. In Before It’s Gone, he shares what he’s learned from covering the disasters climate change is creating. Like so much of the best reporting, his account is at once vivid and terrifying.”
—Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Under a White Sky and The Sixth Extinction

“Before It’s Gone is an account of a TV journalist on the climate beat that reads like it was written by Indiana Jones on Red Bull. Jonathan Vigliotti climbs redwoods, braves wildfires, chases storms, and interviews war refugees in a globe-hopping narrative that captures both the human drama of climate crisis and the challenges a broadcast journalist faces bringing this story to the world in real time.”
—Jeff Goodell, New York Times bestselling author of The Heat Will Kill You First

“A stunning call to action to save ourselves and all life on the planet.”
—Booklist

“CBS News correspondent Vigliotti debuts with a vivid report... the prose is transportive, and [...] stirring portraits ground the climate science. Disquieting and thoroughly reported, this unsettles.”
—Publishers Weekly

“A raw look at the climate disasters wreaking havoc on small-town America [and a] powerful story of surviving, adapting, and making the changes needed to save our home before it’s too late.”
—Kirkus

“We call it ‘global warming,’ but as this fine book makes clear, it takes its toll one place at a time—and every one of those places is loved and mourned.”
—Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature

“Before It’s Gone is a page-turning tour de force. Personal, provocative, empathetic, and ultimately optimistic, this book is the perfect guide to what climate change actually means on the ground, to real people and communities.”
—Steve Brusatte, professor and paleontologist at the University of Edinburgh and New York Times bestselling author of The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs

“From animal extinctions and habitat destruction to the collapse of entire human communities, Before It’s Gone documents the toll of climate change on people and places around the world, asking us to stop, listen, and take action—while we still can.”
—Beth Shapiro, evolutionary molecular biologist and author of Life as We Made It and How to Clone a Mammoth

“Jonathan Vigliotti’s work has propelled him into hurricanes, wildfires, crop failures, and tornado-maimed towns across America. In Before It’s Gone, the CBS correspondent ably guides us through these scenes of ecological disaster, giving us an intimate and in-the-moment understanding of the world’s climate emergency—and leaving little doubt that we’re in for much, much worse.”
—Earl Swift, New York Times bestselling author of Chesapeake Requiem

“With urgency and empathy, Jonathan Vigliotti documents the disastrous consequences of climate change in rural America and the hard work of those determined to hold their communities together. An energetic—and energizing—report from an often-overlooked front line in the climate crisis.”
—Michelle Nijhuis, author of Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction

From the Publisher

2024-02-09
A raw look at the climate disasters wreaking havoc on small-town America.

In four sections—fire, water, air, and Earth—Emmy and Murrow Award–winning CBS News correspondent Vigliotti takes readers on a harrowing journey into a variety of natural disasters across the U.S., which are becoming increasingly frequent and dangerous. The author zooms in on the impact of these disasters on the ordinary Americans living in their paths. From uncontrollable wildfires to massively destructive tornadoes, Vigliotti examines the conditions of each event, as well as the systemic failures of both local and national governments playing catch-up after those life-changing minutes. The author asks a host of relevant questions: What does life mean in a disaster-prone area? Who can afford—both financially and emotionally—to remain in these areas? How can a small town survive the onslaught of storms that often cost more than $1 billion to clean up? Vigliotti lucidly breaks down his time covering these calamities and shares the stories of those who have been displaced by Mother Nature as recently as the Lahaina wildfire of August 2023. “Yes, Lahaina will rebuild again, just like every other American town lost before it,” he writes. “But unless changes are made, another countdown clock will turn on and it’s anyone’s guess when time will run out. Because before every ‘unprecedented’ explosion in the cities and towns of a nation now under siege from an environment it spent too long taking for granted, there is a history of missed opportunities.” The author also chronicles the important work of notable scientists who have fought against apathy and misunderstanding in order to ensure that we are better prepared for the inevitable.

A powerful story of surviving, adapting, and making the changes needed to save our home before it’s too late.

Kirkus Reviews

Jonathan Vigliotti's experience covering natural disasters for CBS News gives a journalistic feel to his audiobook about disasters' effects on small towns. He warns of more devastation in the future. As his recollections of the sights and smells of devastation in Hawaii take on the urgency of a news report, his descriptions of attempts to escape flames add dramatic emphasis. He discusses towns where disasters have hit, pointing out significant landmarks such as a restaurant where townspeople gather to discuss the changes in their lives. He keeps to his own voice, creating characters with inflection and tone. Vigliotti occasionally adds a lighter touch, such as humorously rattling off his hasty preparations for field reporting. J.A.S. © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine

MAY 2024 - AudioFile