The Science of Last Things

Praise for The Science of Last Things

“Smart, harrowing, and lyrically powerful, The Science of Last Things celebrates interconnectedness as a way to not just understand how we are made, but how we might come to terms with our own end. Offering a deeply necessary, clear-eyed look at who we are as flesh-and-bone bodies during the climate crisis, this is a book that searches and finds meaning in both the hard truths and the value of wonder.” —Ada Limón, 24th Poet Laureate of the United States

“Wayland-Smith deftly engages with both human time and geological time, and the shifting boundaries of the self.”—Watershed Notes

“In The Science of Last Things, Ellen Wayland-Smith seamlessly blends the life of the body and the life of the mind, writing less about endings per se (although those, as well) than about evanescence, and the understanding that we all must disappear. That this represents both an individual reckoning and a collective one should go without saying, and these essays range widely in angle and approach, addressing the death of Wayland-Smith’s father from pancreatic cancer and her own diagnosis and treatment for breast cancer, as well as broader social and natural histories. The common thread, of course, is the author’s sensibility, which comes to us infused with ideas and language, and a rigorous ability to see things not as we wish them to be but, instead, as they are. What I mean is that there is no false solace here, although there are many consolations. The Science of Last Things is an acute and necessary book.”—David L. Ulin, author of Sidewalking

“Ellen Wayland-Smith’s writing is a magical alchemy of spiritual insight and scientific wonder. She delves into overwhelming mysteries—birth and death, the origin of life and the end of the world—and miraculously finds new meaning in them, responding to personal and planetary loss and decay with radiant reflections that awaken, delight, and console. These essays are an essential companion for life at the end of the world.”—Briallen Hopper, author of Hard to Love: Essays & Confessions

Ellen Wayland-Smith is the author of Oneida and The Angel in the Marketplace. Her work has appeared in Guernica, Catapult, The Millions, Longreads, The American Scholar, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. She teaches at the University of Southern California and lives in Los Angeles.