The book under review, The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet by John Green, was published on May 18, 2021, by Dutton Penguin. Known primarily for his bestselling young adult fiction like The Fault in Our Stars and Looking for Alaska, Green pivots with grace in this nonfiction debut, blending memoir, science, and philosophical reflection.
The Anthropocene Reviewed is a remarkable collection of personal essays that evolved from a popular podcast of the same name. Each essay rates different facets of the human-centered world on a five-star scale, from Canada Geese to Diet Dr Pepper, sunsets to the Notes app—simple phenomena that, in Green’s hands, become portals into vulnerability, grief, beauty, and meaning.
This book lies at the intersection of memoir, cultural commentary, and pop-philosophy, fitting snugly within the growing genre of “lyrical nonfiction.” John Green brings not only his literary pedigree but also a uniquely empathetic, intellectually curious voice honed through years of reviewing books at Booklist and connecting with millions through YouTube (Vlogbrothers) and podcasts.
His transition from fiction to personal nonfiction stemmed from an exhaustion with “writing in code” (Green, 2021, Introduction) and a desire to speak plainly, as himself. This vulnerability is the book’s emotional heartbeat.
The book’s purpose is quietly radical: to understand and rate human experiences in the Anthropocene—the epoch in which humans have become the dominant influence on the planet. Through intimate stories, historical context, and meditative prose, Green sets out to reckon with the complexity of being alive in a time of both unprecedented despair and astounding wonder.
“I wanted to try to write as myself because I’ve never done that in any formal way,” Green admits, calling this collection “an attempt to fall in love with the world” despite its wounds (Green, 2021, Introduction).
Table of Contents
Background: The Podcast That Became a Book
Before it became a book, The Anthropocene Reviewed was a beloved podcast. From 2018 to 2021, John Green released 36 audio essays, each episode reviewing two seemingly unrelated phenomena—say, Halley’s Comet and Cholera—and connecting them through poetic logic and memoir.
The idea took root when John and his brother Hank, while on a book tour, joked about absurd online reviews—like the person who gave Badlands National Park one star because it had “not enough mountain” (Green, 2021, Introduction). John had also written early reviews in 2014 on Canada geese and Diet Dr Pepper, which his wife Sarah noted were “really memoirs.” That insight birthed the deeply personal tone that defines the book.
In his own words: “In the Anthropocene, there are no disinterested observers; there are only participants” (Green, 2021, Introduction). That line unlocks the ethos of the entire work.
By 2021, Green transformed the podcast into this curated book—forty-four essays, with some newly written during the COVID-19 pandemic. The result was an immediate New York Times bestseller, with over 57,000 copies sold in its first week.
Summary of The Anthropocene Reviewed
1. You’ll Never Walk Alone
In this opening essay of The Anthropocene Reviewed, John Green situates the haunting power of a simple show tune—“You’ll Never Walk Alone”—within the shared grief and fragile hope of the COVID-19 pandemic. The song, originally from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel, becomes for Green more than a musical number: it’s a form of en-couragement, a reminder that even amid despair, we do not walk alone.
“It’s a song about sticking together even when your dreams are tossed and blown.”
This seemingly trite anthem, embraced by Liverpool Football Club fans, paramedics, and mourning families alike, becomes a universal refrain.
Green notes, “We may feel alone…but even in the crushing grind of isolation, we aren’t alone.” In a time when global disconnection reached a fever pitch, this essay offers comfort by rooting connection in both memory and metaphor.
The Anthropocene, in all its chaos and crisis, needs such human rituals of belonging.
2. Humanity’s Temporal Range
With startling cosmic humility, Green confronts our place in geologic time. This essay dissects the term “temporal range”, which refers to the lifespan of a species. For humans, it’s a blink—about 250,000 years, compared to the 10 million years of alpacas or the 240 million of tuataras.
“We are younger than polar bears and coyotes and blue whales and camels.”
Yet, The Anthropocene Reviewed doesn’t spiral into despair. Green explores how our fear of apocalypse is entwined with the knowledge of our inevitable personal death—projected onto the species at large. But he also reminds us of our extraordinary persistence, recounting how humans used persistence hunting to exhaust faster animals, a metaphor for how we might overcome climate change, pandemics, or our own narcissism.
“We. Just. Keep. Going.”
Referencing Octavia Butler’s idea that “change is the one unavoidable, irresistible, ongoing reality”, Green chooses to hope. Not naively—but doggedly. He gives humanity’s brief but fierce timeline four stars, invoking “The Anthropocene Reviewed” not just as critique, but as faith in our unfinished story.
3. Halley’s Comet
The essay on Halley’s Comet is a radiant example of Green’s memoir-as-cosmology approach. He revisits 1986, when he and his father viewed the dim smear of Halley’s Comet through birdwatching binoculars in the Ocala National Forest. That memory—anchored by a makeshift bench they built together—becomes a symbol of human impermanence and perseverance.
“I don’t know how to explain to you how important that bench was to me… But that night, we sat next to each other…and we passed the binoculars back and forth.”
Green threads history, science, and sentimentality into a tapestry that reflects the central thesis of The Anthropocene Reviewed: the monumental is always intertwined with the mundane. He recounts how Halley’s Comet has been witnessed for centuries—by the Talmud, by Edmond Halley, and by Mark Twain, who declared he’d “come in with the comet… and expect to go out with it.”
Yet amid grandeur, there’s humanity. Halley misjudged the moon’s density. The comet itself is “a dirty snowball,” not a galactic beacon. Still, Green finds divinity in the ordinary: the father-son moment, the shared gaze, the fleeting fire of cosmic time.
“We’re the only part of the known universe that knows it’s in a universe.”
He gives Halley’s Comet five stars—because in a universe defined by entropy, what’s more miraculous than recurring beauty?
4. Our Capacity for Wonder
In one of the most poetic essays of The Anthropocene Reviewed, John Green zooms in on the very mechanism that makes this collection possible: the human capacity for wonder. He describes wonder not as escapism, but as a form of attention—a sharp awareness of beauty, vastness, or fragility that forces us to pause.
“To pay attention to a sunset is to pay attention to the extraordinary fact that we are here at all.”
This essay unfolds in layers, from his personal awe at sunsets and hummingbirds to scientific reflections on the evolutionary benefits of curiosity. Yet, Green is not blindly optimistic. He notes that our sense of wonder can be dulled by repetition, even corrupted by consumerism. But despite it all, he continues to feel wonder deeply—and he invites us to as well.
“Wonder is the only antidote I know for existential dread.”
For Green, wonder is a survival instinct of the Anthropocene—an act of resistance against numbness. He gives it 5 stars, because wonder is what makes the darkness bearable and the mundane meaningful.
5. Lascaux Cave Paintings
In this hauntingly beautiful essay, Green descends into the caves of Lascaux, France—not physically, but emotionally and intellectually. The cave paintings, estimated to be around 17,000 years old, capture bison, horses, and human handprints in ochre and black. For Green, they represent more than ancient art—they are an early attempt to say, We were here.
“The hands on the cave walls are not reaching out; they are reaching back.”
He compares this act to all human storytelling: graffiti, tweets, even The Anthropocene Reviewed itself. We are beings compelled to leave marks, to be seen. He reflects on the irony that our species may vanish, but our plastic—and maybe our paintings—might endure.
Green’s voice trembles with reverence for the fragility of these marks. The original cave is closed to visitors now, as breath and bacteria were destroying it. Still, we visit the replica. We long to commune with those who came before.
For Green, these paintings are proof of our humanity, our longing, our need to remember and be remembered.
6. Scratch ’n’ Sniff Stickers
With a joyful yet bittersweet tone, Green tackles one of childhood’s greatest novelties—scratch ’n’ sniff stickers. In The Anthropocene Reviewed, he uses these scented icons of elementary school life as a gateway into the strange intersections of sensory memory, consumerism, and time.
“The most wonderful thing about them was how impermanent they were.”
Green explores how these stickers held power not just because they were rewards, but because they evoked a kind of magic: the ability to conjure scent from paper. He notes how fragile and finite the scent was—eventually fading into paper musk—and how that mirrors life itself.
More subtly, he weaves in reflections on capitalism’s packaging of childhood joy. The Anthropocene, after all, is defined by disposable marvels. Even wonder can be mass-produced.
Still, he rates them 3.5 stars—not for durability, but for the way they encapsulated childhood’s fleeting magic. They were silly, scented time machines.
7. Diet Dr Pepper
This essay is where The Anthropocene Reviewed becomes explicitly autobiographical and quietly profound. John Green confesses his abiding and deeply personal love for Diet Dr Pepper. It’s not satire. It’s not ironic. He simply loves it—and that admission is itself radical.
“There are 23 flavors in Diet Dr Pepper, but for me, the only flavor that really matters is comfort.”
Green traces his history with the drink from his youth through his adult battles with obsessive-compulsive disorder. It becomes a symbol of continuity, relief, and even control in an unpredictable world. He also acknowledges the product’s flaws—the chemicals, the plastic—but doesn’t shy away from affection.
In a world that tries to shame certain comforts, Green reminds us that love needn’t be rational to be real. He gives Diet Dr Pepper 4 stars. Not perfect, but profoundly human. In The Anthropocene Reviewed, even artificial drinks become portals to memory and meaning.
8. Velociraptors
Here, Green cheekily dismantles our pop culture version of velociraptors—the scaly, six-foot-tall beasts from Jurassic Park—and replaces it with reality: turkey-sized feathered creatures that probably looked more like angry chickens.
“Velociraptors, as we imagine them, don’t exist. But then again, neither does the past we imagine.”
This is one of the more humorous essays in The Anthropocene Reviewed, but under the wit is something serious. Green discusses how our distortions of the past—be it dinosaurs, or our own personal histories—shape the present. He also confronts the ways pop culture “commodifies awe” by turning science into spectacle.
Yet, he’s not dismissive. He gives velociraptors 3 stars—not because they weren’t real enough, but because we weren’t.
“We loved the idea of velociraptors so much that we made them real… in a way.”
It’s a playful meditation on myth, memory, and the human drive to fill gaps in the fossil record with story. As ever, The Anthropocene Reviewed isn’t just about what was—it’s about what we need to believe.
9. Canada Geese
John Green opens this essay with a confession: he hates Canada geese. Their aggression, their droppings, their loud honking. Yet in true The Anthropocene Reviewed fashion, the essay doesn’t stay there. He reflects on the goose as a creature reshaped by human intervention—once endangered, now thriving in human-made environments like golf courses and corporate lawns.
“We made a world perfect for them. Then got mad when they moved in.”
This becomes a metaphor for unintended consequences. We mold nature for convenience, then resent nature for adapting. Green even compares them to us—loud, territorial, oddly beautiful. Ultimately, he gives them 2 stars, admitting, “It’s not their fault they remind me of me.”
It’s a quietly devastating piece about how the Anthropocene forces us to live with the monsters we’ve helped create—feathered, or otherwise.
10. Teddy Bears
At first glance, this essay reads like a nostalgic tribute to childhood comfort. But Green, as always, takes us deeper. Teddy bears are named after Theodore Roosevelt’s refusal to shoot a tied-up bear during a hunting trip. Yet the teddy bear, a symbol of gentleness, emerged from an act of violent recreation.
“The bear was still hunted. Just not that bear.”
The essay spirals into reflections on childhood, trauma, and projection. Green describes the teddy bear his child sleeps with—worn, head-bent, stitched—and admits, “I think I love that bear more than almost anything.”
In The Anthropocene Reviewed, even a plush toy becomes a site of contradiction: mass-produced innocence shaped by colonial masculinity and capitalist softness. Green rates teddy bears 4 stars, not for their history, but for what they’ve come to mean: a way for children—and grown-ups—to hold something when life gets too hard.
11. The Hall of Presidents
Green approaches Disney World’s Hall of Presidents with a mixture of unease and curiosity. On paper, it’s an animatronic celebration of U.S. leadership, but beneath that? A sanitized spectacle of power. Presidents are flattened into benevolent patriots, regardless of their moral legacies.
“They stand in a semicircle like gods… staring down at us in animatronic judgment.”
In this essay, The Anthropocene Reviewed tackles historical narrative—how we shape memory to soothe discomfort. Green compares the Hall’s scripted lines to real presidential decisions: genocide, slavery, nuclear threats. The dissonance is unbearable—and precisely the point.
Still, he reflects on what such monuments say about us. We want heroes. We want coherence. But maybe what we need is honesty. “History,” he writes, “is not a list of dates or facts. It’s the stories we tell about who we were.”
Green rates the Hall of Presidents 2.5 stars: “It’s more fascinating than good. Like history itself.”
12. Air-Conditioning
With precision and paradox, Green examines air-conditioning not just as a comfort, but as an ethical dilemma. It has saved lives, made work possible in brutal climates, and made modern civilization bearable in extreme heat. But it’s also a driver of climate change—a technology that cools us while warming the planet.
“We are so good at solving problems… and so bad at foresight.”
He traces its development from industrial factories to modern suburbs, and then shares a moment during a heatwave when he saw his children lying on the floor under a fan, exhausted. He writes with a mix of gratitude and guilt.
Air-conditioning is both “miracle and menace,” a perfect symbol of the Anthropocene: short-term survival that may hasten long-term collapse. Green gives it 3.5 stars—because how do you rate something you can’t live without, even if it’s killing you?
This essay captures the deep tension at the heart of The Anthropocene Reviewed—the dual nature of progress, the unintended consequences of comfort.
13. Staphylococcus aureus
This is where the project gets biologically terrifying. Green examines Staphylococcus aureus, a bacterium that lives on 30% of human skin, usually harmless—but sometimes, catastrophically not. He recounts his own brush with it, including a skin infection that required antibiotics and deep anxiety.
“When the body turns against itself, even a paper cut can become a war zone.”
He discusses antibiotic resistance and how this common bacterium has outmaneuvered us. MRSA (methicillin-resistant S. aureus) now kills tens of thousands each year in the U.S. alone. Once again, The Anthropocene Reviewed reminds us: in trying to control nature, we often just escalate the arms race.
But the most piercing moment is personal. Green recounts holding his young son, terrified the infection had spread, and feeling helpless in the face of microbial indifference. “I wanted to protect him,” he writes, “and couldn’t.”
He rates Staphylococcus aureus 1 star—not for its virulence, but for what it reveals: how little we control, and how vulnerable we still are.
14. The Internet
John Green begins this essay with a confession familiar to many of us: he loves the internet.
Not just tolerates or uses it—but loves it. He loves “the odd beauty of Tumblr text posts,” the weird specificity of Reddit threads, and YouTube rabbit holes that stretch back 15 years. But the essay quickly deepens. As with so much in The Anthropocene Reviewed, what begins in joy becomes tempered by consequences.
“It is strange to live in a world where we know so much and understand so little.”
He talks about how the internet amplifies misinformation and erodes our attention, comparing it to a junk food diet of the mind—rich, endless, and ultimately dissociating. Still, he defends it as a space of connection and shared culture. For Green, the internet is like human nature itself: absurd, communal, cruel, beautiful.
He rates the internet 3 stars—not because it’s mediocre, but because it embodies the contradictions of the Anthropocene. It’s a miracle that’s eating us alive. And yet, without it, The Anthropocene Reviewed itself might never have reached us.
15. Academic Decathlon
This is Green at his most tender and autobiographical. He recounts his time as a coach for an Academic Decathlon team at a small, under-resourced school. It’s a portrait of hope in a fractured system: kids competing academically not because they had every advantage, but despite lacking most of them.
“They didn’t need to prove they were smart. They needed to prove they mattered.”
What makes this essay so powerful is its honesty. Green doesn’t pretend that winning changed their lives. But he reflects on how these kids worked, studied, and showed up. They wore ill-fitting suits and poured themselves into facts, poetry, and formulas. He tears up recalling it—and we do too.
In the context of The Anthropocene Reviewed, Academic Decathlon becomes a symbol of grit in a world teetering toward indifference. He gives it 4.5 stars—not because of the event itself, but because of what it revealed about resilience, dignity, and love in learning.
16. Sunsets
This essay is a quiet explosion of beauty. Green notes that sunsets are so universally loved that they almost feel cliché—and yet, they continue to astound us. “There is no sunset so lovely that someone won’t dismiss it as a cliché,” he writes, but that’s exactly the point. We need clichés that remind us of beauty.
“Sunsets are cliché because they are true every day.”
He describes watching sunsets during the pandemic, holding his children as the sky burned with orange, and feeling grateful and afraid all at once. For Green, sunsets offer perspective—not as escape, but as a daily practice of noticing. Even in The Anthropocene, the sky still performs.
He gives sunsets 5 stars, and frankly, who wouldn’t? They are reminders that beauty can exist without utility. In a world of algorithms and scarcity, sunsets are radically useless. And radically healing.
17. Jerzy Dudek’s Performance on May 25, 2005
This is not just a soccer story. It’s a resurrection tale. John Green recounts the miracle comeback of Liverpool F.C. in the 2005 UEFA Champions League final, where goalkeeper Jerzy Dudek made what can only be called divine saves.
“He played not like a man possessed, but like a man possessed by someone better at soccer than he was.”
Green, a lifelong Liverpool supporter, doesn’t just relive the game—he relives the emotion: the disbelief, the agony, the cosmic unfairness, and finally, the grace. He ties it all back to the human desire for story, for moments when the impossible happens not in fiction, but in Istanbul.
Within The Anthropocene Reviewed, this match becomes a parable: sometimes, against the odds, everything comes together. Dudek’s spaghetti-legged penalty save wasn’t just a move—it was myth-making. Green gives it 5 stars, because occasionally, history becomes poetry.
18. Penguins of Madagascar
At first glance, this review is about a spin-off animated movie. But very quickly, it becomes a meditation on comfort, parenthood, and survival. Green watched Penguins of Madagascar over and over during his son’s hospitalization—a period marked by fear, medical tests, and exhaustion.
“I began to crave it. Not the story, but the rhythm.”
The essay is less about the film and more about what it held: structure, distraction, predictability. For Green, it became a lullaby for his anxious brain. He acknowledges that it’s a chaotic, often senseless film. But he also recognizes that, sometimes, a senseless thing keeps us sane.
This is The Anthropocene Reviewed at its most intimate—rating not the artifact, but the role it played in a fragile life. He gives it 3 stars, not because it’s great, but because it showed up when he needed it most.
19. Piggly Wiggly
Piggly Wiggly, the world’s first self-service grocery store, seems like an odd subject for lyrical reflection—but that’s exactly what makes this essay so striking. John Green dives into the seemingly mundane innovation that revolutionized how we shop: from clerk-assisted ordering to shelves you wander yourself.
“The Anthropocene is a time of transformation, and few things transformed us as much as the grocery store.”
Green uses Piggly Wiggly to trace the evolution of consumerism, exploring how autonomy and abundance became trademarks of the shopping experience. But he doesn’t idealize it. He questions the ways consumer convenience distances us from labor, from food systems, from other people.
Still, he finds poetry in aisles of fluorescent-lit order—especially during the pandemic, when grocery stores became one of the few remaining communal spaces. He gives Piggly Wiggly 4 stars, for being both a symbol of progress and a strange monument to human disconnection in The Anthropocene Reviewed.
20. The Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest
This essay is as chaotic as the event it reviews—and yet, Green manages to extract something surprisingly sincere from the annual spectacle of people devouring dozens of hot dogs in minutes.
“The contest is an embrace of excess so pure that it circles back around to innocence.”
Green dissects the absurdity of competitive eating, tracing it back to ancient myths of gluttony and modern notions of American abundance. He explores how the contest reflects a culture obsessed with spectacle, speed, and strange forms of heroism. And yet, he confesses admiration for Joey Chestnut, who once ate 76 hot dogs in 10 minutes.
The brilliance of The Anthropocene Reviewed is how it finds humanity even in the ridiculous. Green sees this contest as performance art, as discipline, even as celebration. He gives it 3.5 stars, not for nutrition or dignity, but for how it forces us to reckon with what it means to be full—physically, emotionally, and culturally.
21. CNN
Here, Green delivers one of his most cutting and complex reviews. CNN becomes a lens through which he examines our relationship to 24/7 news, fear, and information overload. He recalls watching it obsessively after 9/11, clinging to certainty amid terror.
“The news doesn’t end anymore. It loops.”
He critiques CNN for turning crisis into entertainment—fracturing stories into drama and boiling nuance into urgency. But he also acknowledges its human cost: the anchors struggling to maintain composure, the viewers like him struggling to stay informed without losing their minds.
In The Anthropocene Reviewed, CNN becomes an emblem of how the modern world collapses time. There is no “after” the event. There is only “what’s next.” Green gives CNN 2 stars, not out of hatred, but out of concern—for the medium, the audience, and the emotional toll of relentless awareness.
22. Harvey
In this moving essay, Green reviews Harvey, a 1950 film starring James Stewart about a man whose best friend is an invisible 6-foot-tall rabbit. On the surface, it’s whimsical. But beneath it lies a meditation on mental illness, kindness, and what it means to be understood.
“Sometimes, you meet someone who sees the world differently, and instead of trying to fix them, you just walk with them.”
Green reflects on his own experiences with mental illness—particularly obsessive-compulsive disorder—and how Harvey offered an early example of nonjudgmental empathy. The film doesn’t pathologize Elwood P. Dowd; it loves him, rabbit and all.
He gives Harvey 5 stars, not as a film critic, but as someone who knows what it’s like to feel unmoored and still crave connection. In the context of The Anthropocene Reviewed, Harvey is a reminder that in a world that demands coherence, gentleness is an act of defiance.
23. The Yips
This essay is about failure—not the dramatic kind, but the quiet, bewildering kind: when you suddenly can’t do something you’ve always done. The yips plague athletes, musicians, even writers. And Green? He’s had them too.
“The yips are terrifying because they are inexplicable.”
He discusses how the brain can short-circuit routine, how anxiety and expectation create a feedback loop of paralysis. But it’s not just a sports problem. In The Anthropocene Reviewed, the yips become symbolic of a deeper human fear: what if I lose what makes me me?
Green writes candidly about his own creative blocks, refers to “a common experience for artists and creators where they feel unable to generate new ideas or complete creative work” and emotional spirals. But instead of offering a solution, he offers companionship. “You are not alone,” he seems to say, “even in this weird, stuttering silence.”
He gives the yips 2 stars, because they are painful, frustrating, and often isolating. But in writing about them, he does what all great reviewers do: he makes the silence bearable by naming it.
24. Auld Lang Syne
John Green approaches Auld Lang Syne not as a song, but as a ritual of remembering. Played at New Year’s, funerals, and other endings, it’s often sung when we don’t know what else to say. Green writes beautifully about how the song transcends language—even when we mangle its Scots lyrics, its feeling remains clear.
“The words might fail, but the emotion never does.”
He also reflects on the sheer persistence of the song—written in 1788, carried across wars, empires, and personal heartbreaks. In The Anthropocene Reviewed, Auld Lang Syne becomes a stand-in for all our attempts to hold on to what’s passing: time, friendship, youth.
Green gives the song 4.5 stars, not because it’s musically complex or lyrically clear, but because it works. It lets us grieve without needing reasons, and hope without needing certainty. It’s a song about letting go, together.
25. Googling Strangers
This essay is equal parts hilarious and heartbreaking. Green confesses to a behavior many of us share but rarely admit: obsessively Googling people we briefly encounter—cashiers, former classmates, nurses, fellow patients. He calls it “emotional sleuthing.”
“I do not know how to stop caring about strangers.”
Through this habit, he reflects on our desire to make stories out of fragments. In the Anthropocene, where chance encounters often vanish without closure, Googling becomes a digital act of longing—one that offers the illusion of intimacy.
But he also questions the ethics of it. Who gets to be looked up? What do we do with the answers—or the lack of them?
Green gives Googling strangers 3.5 stars—because while it speaks to our need for connection, it’s also a sign of how we’ve outsourced curiosity and privacy to the algorithm. In The Anthropocene Reviewed, it’s a small window into our internet-shaped hearts.
26. Indianapolis
This is one of Green’s most personal essays—a love letter to his adopted hometown. He praises its neighborhoods, its surprising quirks, its tree canopy and cultural contradictions. But he also critiques its racism, its car dependency, its gun violence.
“Indianapolis is not just where I live. It is where I became.”
The Anthropocene here feels grounded—literal. Green walks the Monon Trail, shops at local stores, watches his children grow up under sycamore trees. It’s a place shaped by climate change, by suburban sprawl, by Amazon fulfillment centers.
And yet, it’s his.
He’s chosen it, with all its contradictions. That’s what makes this essay so powerful—it’s not a PR ad. It’s a citizen’s reckoning. He gives Indianapolis 3.5 stars—not for what it is, but for what it tries to be. For him, it’s the imperfect middle of a meaningful life.
27. Kentucky Bluegrass
Here, Green takes on a botanical misconception: that the green lawns we call “Kentucky bluegrass” are natural. In fact, the grass is Eurasian, imported and imposed. And it requires pesticides, irrigation, and labor to survive the U.S. climate.
“What we call ‘natural’ is so often carefully curated illusion.”
This is a classic The Anthropocene Reviewed move—peeling back the ordinary to reveal its artifice. Green discusses the monoculture of lawns, the strange obsession with controlling nature, and how “a perfect lawn” became a symbol of respectability and success.
He gives Kentucky bluegrass 2 stars, critiquing both its environmental cost and its false promise. It’s not the plant’s fault—it’s ours. We planted it everywhere, even where it doesn’t belong.
28. The Indianapolis 500
This review merges noise, spectacle, and memory. Green recounts attending the race with his late father—how the smell of motor oil and fried pork tenderloin sandwiches became tangled up with love and grief.
“I remember the sound before I remember the race.”
The Indianapolis 500 is loud, absurd, commercialized, and deeply human. Green acknowledges the environmental cost of racing, the capitalistic excess of the event, and yet—he can’t help but be moved by it. The pageantry. The drama. The nostalgia.
In The Anthropocene Reviewed, this race becomes more than sport. It’s a ritual of identity for Indianapolis. It’s the roar of the past still echoing in the present. He gives it 4 stars, partly for the racing, mostly for the memory.
29. Monopoly
John Green begins by tracing Monopoly’s surprising origins as anti-capitalist satire. The game, now infamous for family fights and never-ending play, was initially designed by Elizabeth Magie to reveal the evils of land monopolies. Ironically, its modern version glorifies the very thing it once aimed to critique.
“We turned protest into pastime.”
In classic The Anthropocene Reviewed form, Green explores the game’s long, ironic arc—from a critique of wealth hoarding to a celebration of ruthless domination. He also shares a personal anecdote of a six-hour Monopoly game with his brother and father, where the game outlasted their patience and joy.
But he’s not entirely cynical. Monopoly, like the Anthropocene itself, is both a system and a story. We may be stuck in it, but we can also learn from it. He rates Monopoly 2 stars, not for playability—but for how it unwittingly reveals who we are when we’re trying to win.
30. Super Mario Kart
In this nostalgic yet sharply analytical essay, Green explores Super Mario Kart not just as a racing game, but as a cultural phenomenon—one of the first video games he played with other people rather than against a computer. He highlights its joy, chaos, and how it rewarded sabotage as much as speed.
“It is a game that taught me competition is fun only when we all agree to the rules.”
Green discusses how Super Mario Kart helped normalize casual video games, broadening their cultural reach beyond arcades and into homes. But more personally, it gave him moments of connection. Hours spent with friends, siblings, kids, laughing over banana peels and blue shells.
In The Anthropocene Reviewed, this game becomes a relic of a simpler time—but also a lens on digital evolution. It taught him about community, frustration, and joy in losing badly.
31. Bonneville Salt Flats
The Bonneville Salt Flats—an alien landscape in Utah where land speed records are set—become for Green a metaphor for extremes. The white, flat expanse looks endless. It’s where humans test limits, seek perfection, and crash gloriously.
“It is not a place where humans live. It is a place where we dare.”
Green writes about the ecological fragility of the flats—how they’re shrinking due to mining and water mismanagement. And yet, they remain sacred to engineers, racers, and dreamers who chase impossible speeds.
This is The Anthropocene Reviewed at its most poetic. A landscape created by ancient water, now threatened by modern industry, still glowing with myth. Green gives the Bonneville Salt Flats 4.5 stars, honoring both their sublime stillness and our noisy need to push forward.
32. Hiroyuki Doi’s Circle Drawings
In one of the book’s quietest and most spiritual essays, Green contemplates the Japanese artist Hiroyuki Doi, whose intricate drawings consist entirely of circles. Doi began drawing them after the death of his brother. For him, each circle is a soul.
“To draw a circle is to say: I was here.”
Green reflects on Doi’s devotion—hundreds of thousands of circles forming complex, meditative patterns. He compares it to his own compulsion to write—to mark, to make sense, to stay.
In the Anthropocene, where permanence is an illusion, Doi’s art is an act of stillness and reverence. Green gives these circle drawings 5 stars, for being what art so rarely is in the age of algorithms: quiet, patient, and eternal in its slowness.
33. Whispering
This unexpectedly profound essay starts as a personal reflection on ASMR—the tingling sensation that whispering, crinkling, or brushing sounds can induce. Green discusses how whispering triggers calm, nostalgia, and even intimacy. He admits that he finds whispering videos weirdly comforting.
“Whispering is the sound of care.”
But Green zooms out, reflecting on how whispering is both private and communal, ephemeral and ancient. In a world screaming for attention, a whisper becomes an act of resistance—a quiet that asks us to listen.
He even discusses how ASMR creators are mostly women, and how that intersects with gendered labor—nurturing, calming, tending. In The Anthropocene Reviewed, whispering becomes an antidote to noise, consumerism, and overstimulation.
He gives whispering 4 stars, not just for how it feels in the brain, but for what it represents: a gentler way to be heard.
34. Viral Meningitis
Green opens this essay by recounting his personal experience with viral meningitis, which struck him suddenly and violently during a family vacation. He describes the searing headache, fever, vomiting, and sensory confusion with harrowing clarity.
“Pain narrowed the world to a tunnel, and at the end of it, there was only nausea.”
The illness reveals the fragility of the human brain, our most defining and vulnerable organ. Green also explores the invisibility of recovery—how healing doesn’t follow narrative arcs, and how some things (like headaches and fear) linger long after the virus has left.
In The Anthropocene Reviewed, viral meningitis becomes both a literal and symbolic illness—a reminder of how small shifts in our internal chemistry can shatter reality. He gives it 1 star, acknowledging its power while refusing to romanticize its impact. Pain may shape us, but that doesn’t mean it deserves a good review.
35. Plague
This is one of the most historically expansive essays in the book. Green outlines the Black Death—the 14th-century pandemic that wiped out a third of Europe—and traces how plague reshaped cities, economies, belief systems, and even language.
“Pandemics are both biological and narrative events.”
In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, Green reflects on our enduring fear of contagion. He draws comparisons not to be dramatic, but to illuminate how we respond: with denial, blame, art, silence.
The essay is filled with sobering facts—yet remains deeply human. Green doesn’t just dwell on death tolls. He focuses on those who remained: rebuilding, grieving, documenting. Plague, in The Anthropocene Reviewed, is not just a medieval relic—it’s a mirror.
He gives it 2 stars—not because it wasn’t “effective” (it was), but because it represents one of humanity’s most profound traumas. We endured. But at great cost.
36. Wintry Mix
A wintry mix—rain, sleet, snow, and ice in one meteorological cocktail—becomes a metaphor for unpredictability. Green admits to hating it: the slush, the sogginess, the indecision. It’s not beautiful like snow or refreshing like rain. It’s just… annoying.
“It’s the weather equivalent of a shrug.”
And yet, he finds meaning in that very messiness. Wintry mix is what life often feels like in The Anthropocene: neither tragedy nor triumph, but a grim, gray in-between. It’s when the world forgets how to make up its mind. When even the weather seems confused.
This is one of the book’s most understated essays, and one of its most universal. Green gives wintry mix 2 stars—but only after admitting it’s more honest than many blue-sky lies. Sometimes, life isn’t storm or sunshine. It’s just slush.
37. The Hot Dogs of Bæjarins Beztu Pylsur
In one of his most joyful and unexpectedly profound essays, Green reviews the hot dogs of Bæjarins Beztu Pylsur, a famous stand in Reykjavík, Iceland. The hot dogs, he says, are objectively good—but the experience was unforgettable.
“The sky was pink. The wind cold. The hot dog warm. I was there.”
He reflects on taste as memory, on how flavor links us to place, people, and moments. He writes about his brother, the long walk they took, the Icelandic mustard, the thrill of being alive somewhere specific. This hot dog wasn’t a snack—it was a portal.
Green gives the hot dogs 4.5 stars—not because they’re the best in the world, but because of what they mean. In The Anthropocene Reviewed, this essay reminds us that joy doesn’t need justification. Sometimes, a hot dog is enough.
38. The Notes App
Here, Green unpacks a surprisingly emotional relationship with the Notes app on his phone. At first glance, it’s just a utilitarian tool—where we jot grocery lists or half-thoughts. But Green finds something tender in this digital shoebox of our inner lives.
“My Notes app is a graveyard of beginnings.”
He reads through old entries: jokes, therapy reflections, fragments of poems, questions he never answered. In them, he finds a portrait of a mind trying to stay afloat—trying to remember something important, even when it’s not clear what that was.
This essay is deeply vulnerable. It suggests that what we record—messy, partial, incoherent—is a kind of survival. The Anthropocene is full of noise, but the Notes app captures our quiet attempts to matter.
Green gives it 3.5 stars, acknowledging both its plainness and its profundity. It may never be published, but sometimes, a Note is all we can leave behind.
39. The Mountain Goats
This essay is a love letter to The Mountain Goats, a band led by John Darnielle, whose lyrics often focus on pain, endurance, and survival. Green finds deep solace in their rawness, especially during moments of personal suffering.
“I survived because I kept listening to The Mountain Goats.”
The music becomes not just a soundtrack, but a life raft. Green describes driving alone at night, depressed and terrified, shouting along to lyrics like: “I am going to make it through this year if it kills me.” The Mountain Goats, to him, are proof that someone else has hurt this badly—and lived to write about it.
He gives the band 5 stars, not for technical brilliance but for their capacity to be with you in the dark. In The Anthropocene Reviewed, they represent the radical power of art to scream back at despair—and win, if only for a song or two.
40. The QWERTY Keyboard
The QWERTY keyboard isn’t the most efficient system—it was designed in the 19th century to prevent mechanical typewriter jams, not to optimize typing. And yet, we’re still using it.
“We are shaped by our tools, but we also shape them into symbols.”
Green explores how QWERTY has become a habit of history—a compromise frozen into muscle memory. He reflects on how its inefficiency mirrors so much about being human: we build systems we can’t undo, even when we know better.
In The Anthropocene Reviewed, QWERTY becomes a metaphor for entropy and stubbornness—how difficult it is to unlearn what we’ve learned to live with.
He gives the QWERTY layout 3 stars—not because it’s broken, but because it’s baked into our bones. It’s good enough. And sometimes, good enough wins.
41. The World’s Largest Ball of Paint
Green visits this roadside attraction in Alexandria, Indiana—a literal ball of paint, started by a man who painted a baseball for his son. One layer turned into two… then 26,000 coats later, the ball weighs over 2,500 pounds and hangs from a barn ceiling.
“Layer upon layer, absurdity became intention.”
What began as a joke becomes a devotion. People come from all over to add layers. Green paints one too, marveling at how accidental monuments emerge from love, ritual, and repetition.
In The Anthropocene Reviewed, this massive paintball isn’t just kitsch. It’s a monument to continuity, care, and the human desire to leave a mark—even if it’s weird and heavy and slightly sticky.
He gives it 4 stars, because it’s beautiful in its ridiculousness. It’s proof that the silliest things can mean the most, especially when we share them.
42. Sycamore Trees
Green opens this quiet essay by describing the sycamore trees in his Indianapolis neighborhood—how their mottled bark and wide leaves give him comfort. Sycamores, he notes, are survivors. They thrive near water and endure city pollution.
“When I was sick, I walked among sycamores. They made no demands of me.”
He traces their botanical history and ecological usefulness, but mostly, he just sits with them. The Anthropocene often feels like collapse, but sycamores remind him that growth happens anyway. They leaf out each spring without ceremony.
This is one of the most spiritual essays in the book. Green doesn’t worship the trees, but he does trust them. He gives sycamore trees 4.5 stars—not because they’re rare or dramatic, but because they remind him that the world continues, even gently.
43. “New Partner”
Green closes this batch with a review of “New Partner”, a song by Bonnie “Prince” Billy that devastates him every time. The lyrics describe a man trying to move on from grief, from a lost love, maybe from himself. Green listens to it when he needs to cry, and often, he does.
“There are certain truths I can’t access until I hear them sung.”
He reflects on music’s ability to hold emotions that words can’t express. In “New Partner,” there’s guilt, desire, resignation, and something beyond forgiveness. It’s about having a future you’re not sure you deserve—and loving someone through the ache.
In The Anthropocene Reviewed, this song becomes a vessel for nonlinear healing. He gives it 5 stars, not because it fixes pain, but because it understands it.
44. Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance
This essay centers around a photograph by August Sander, taken in 1914, showing three young men—dressed in formal suits—walking confidently, almost playfully, toward a dance. Green is haunted by this image. Not just because of what it shows, but because of what it can’t.
“We see them at their most alive, right before their lives were upended by war.”
The men in the photograph are full of youth, optimism, and style—but World War I would soon sweep across Europe, stealing that future. Green uses this to explore photography as both memory and illusion, how images freeze a moment that history erases.
He then reflects on how much of the Anthropocene is like this—we romanticize still frames while forgetting the systems, violence, and suffering beneath them.
Green gives the photograph 4.5 stars—not for its beauty, but for how it reminds us that joy is always under threat, and yet, people still dress up and walk into it anyway. In The Anthropocene Reviewed, this photo becomes a haunting artifact of hope against time.
45. Postscript
The final essay is a farewell, a confession, and a benediction. It’s not just a conclusion—it’s a final reckoning with Green’s own fragility. He reflects on writing this book while navigating depression, illness, and the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I’ve always wanted to write like I’m not afraid of the end.”
But he is afraid—and honest about it. The Postscript is quiet, honest, and trembling. He thanks the reader not just for reading, but for staying. He explains that reviewing the Anthropocene—this chaotic human-dominated epoch—was a way to create coherence amid disorder. A way to tell stories that hold both sorrow and wonder.
He mentions that he wrote the book partly to leave something behind for his children. In a world overwhelmed by noise, he wanted to say something that mattered, even if it didn’t last.
He doesn’t rate the Postscript. He doesn’t need to.
Final Thoughts on The Anthropocene Reviewed
Across 45 essays, The Anthropocene Reviewed masterfully balances trivia and transcendence. Green reviews everything from sunsets to meningitis, from hot dogs to sycamores, but each essay is about far more than its title suggests. It’s about being alive now, in this strange, broken, shimmering time.
He writes:
“We are inescapably, ecstatically, and overwhelmingly human.”
The Anthropocene is a geological era, yes—but it’s also an emotional condition. Green’s project is to review this condition not as a critic, but as a fellow traveler. That’s what makes this book not just smart, but tender.
From start to finish, The Anthropocene Reviewed is an act of remembering, forgiving, and noticing. And in a world that constantly forgets, this book is an exquisite, imperfect effort to pause and see.
Highlighted Lessons (Selected Essays with Citations)
| Essay | Theme | Quote |
|---|---|---|
| Canada Geese | Messiness of nature and memory | “I had written 1,500 words about Diet Dr Pepper without once mentioning my deeply personal love of it” (Green, p. 5). |
| Staphylococcus aureus | Complexity of bacteria and fear | “Infectious disease… has always haunted humanity’s dreams and history” (Green, p. 102). |
| Scratch ‘n’ Sniff Stickers | Joy in the trivial | “Smell is the oldest sense and often the most neglected in memory” (Green, p. 85). |
| Plague | Historical empathy | “We survived, and our survival meant change—often horrible change” (Green, p. 194). |
| Sunsets | Emotional consistency amid impermanence | “Maybe the sky is a five-star experience” (Green, p. 191). |
The book oscillates between wonder and grief, precision and poetry, humor and solemnity. It’s this tension that makes it so deeply human.
Critical Analysis of The Anthropocene Reviewed
Evaluation of Content
John Green’s The Anthropocene Reviewed is quietly profound. It doesn’t hammer its points with academic bravado or demand ideological loyalty. Instead, Green gives us 44 essays rooted in personal vulnerability, epistemological humility, and a poet’s instinct for connection. These essays are personal and deeply felt—and through that subjectivity, they reveal universal truths.
Each topic—from “The QWERTY Keyboard” to “Googling Strangers”—might sound arbitrary at first glance. But that’s where Green excels. He elevates the mundane into meditative grandeur. His reflections don’t just inform; they disarm, then rebuild you. For example, in The Hall of Presidents, he writes:
“Sometimes I feel like my country is a historical fiction novel written by someone who isn’t very good at research” (Green, p. 133).
That’s a witty line, but it also underscores a subtle critique of American myth-making.
What’s extraordinary is the layering. In The Mountain Goats, Green weaves his mental health struggles with the fan culture surrounding the band. In Academic Decathlon, he opens up about his teen years and a near-fatal car accident, and then asks larger questions about identity and how we measure success. Each essay is deeply textured—anecdote, fact, historical context, philosophical question—all arranged like emotional architecture.
The book’s central thesis is that reviewing our world is itself a form of meaning-making. That we live in a time where everyone is reviewing everything—from apples to ambulance services—means we are always engaged in finding significance. Green’s five-star scale isn’t a gimmick; it’s a lens. And in his hands, it becomes a mirror too.
In one of the most powerful essays, “Humanity’s Temporal Range,” Green writes:
“We are so powerful that we have escaped our planet’s atmosphere. But we are not powerful enough to save those we love from suffering” (Green, p. 25).
That sentence alone encapsulates the Anthropocene dilemma.
Does the Book Fulfill Its Purpose?
Absolutely. Green’s goal—stated explicitly—is to stop “writing in code” and instead “write as myself” (Green, Introduction). The book is deeply personal yet not self-indulgent. Its micro-memoir style allows each piece to function like a polished marble in a mosaic.
And unlike many books tackling the Anthropocene—often heavy with doom—Green’s work is saturated in gentle defiance and optimism. He writes about how being aware of the world’s decline doesn’t make him love it less—but more.
Style and Accessibility
John Green’s writing style is unmistakably lyrical. It’s a cocktail of intellectual curiosity, literary elegance, and sincere vulnerability. He combines memoir with cultural criticism and science writing, without making you feel talked down to. That’s no small feat.
For example, in Staphylococcus aureus, he manages to explain bacterial mutation, epidemiology, and medical ethics—while also telling the story of his own childhood surgeries. That blend of science and soul is rare:
“Infectious disease…has always haunted humanity’s dreams and history” (Green, p. 102).
His tone is confessional but not self-centered. Emotional but not melodramatic. It’s accessible without ever dumbing things down. Whether you’re a scientist, a student, or someone who hasn’t picked up a nonfiction book in years, The Anthropocene Reviewed meets you where you are.
He even discusses the tension between metaphor and reality in illness narratives. In Labyrinthitis, he rejects turning his dizziness into a metaphor for imbalance in life, writing:
“I did not get labyrinthitis because the universe wanted to teach me a lesson about balance…Human life is a balancing act. But it’s not a metaphor” (Green, p. 7).
It’s that exact refusal to mythologize pain that makes his writing so trustworthy.
Themes and Relevance to Our World
Thematically, The Anthropocene Reviewed tackles:
- Mortality and Memory
- The Climate Crisis
- Mental Illness
- The Ethics of Hope
- Connection in the Digital Age
- Beauty in Triviality
- What it Means to Be Human in the Anthropocene
The Anthropocene itself—the epoch where humans reshape the planet—remains a highly relevant concern. Green explores it not through charts and reports, but through feeling. By focusing on human-centered elements, like “Whispering” or “Teddy Bears,” he reframes what environmental writing can be.
This book is not about how we’re destroying the planet; it’s about what’s still worth loving within it.
And his reflections on COVID-19 offer a time capsule of early pandemic psychology. Written in real time, his essay “You’ll Never Walk Alone” beautifully illustrates the shared emotional trauma of 2020. When Green writes:
“We must go on. And none of us ever walks alone” (Green, p. 10),
it doesn’t read as cliché. It lands as earned truth.
John Green’s Authority and Expertise
John Green is not a scientist or historian—but he is a lifelong learner and skilled communicator. His time at Booklist gave him the discipline of tight review writing, and his YouTube presence trained him in how to connect with broad audiences. What gives him authority is not formal training, but intellectual sincerity.
He does his research. Essays like Halley’s Comet and The QWERTY Keyboard are packed with historical insight, yet Green never pretends to be the final authority. He remains a participant-observer in this human experiment. And that, ironically, makes him the best kind of guide.
Conclusion
Overall Impressions
John Green’s The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet is a book that does something few works of nonfiction dare to do: it makes the reader feel seen in the context of both cosmic insignificance and everyday heartbreak.
Through his disarmingly personal tone and sharp intellectual insights, Green weaves a tapestry that touches on climate change, music, memory, microbes, football chants, and loneliness—with each thread carefully placed, yet never overwrought.
He doesn’t lecture. He observes. He doesn’t preach. He participates. And in doing so, he invites the reader to recognize the quiet miracles—sunsets, Diet Dr Pepper, the Notes app—that define our shared existence in the Anthropocene.
“It has taken me all my life up to now to fall in love with the world,” Green writes, “but I’ve started to feel it the last couple of years.” (Green, p. 13)
This sentence, like so many in the book, holds a trembling beauty. It’s the sort of line that lingers long after you’ve turned the last page. And it’s this emotional afterglow that makes the book not just a read, but a companion.
Who Should Read This Book?
Ideal for:
- Readers seeking emotionally intelligent nonfiction
- Climate-concerned individuals who want to feel hope, not just despair
- Mental health advocates
- Fans of John Green’s previous work
- Students or teachers looking for accessible yet profound content
- People who find meaning in the ordinary and beauty in nuance
Less ideal for:
- Readers who prefer purely empirical, data-heavy environmental literature
- Those expecting a structured argument or academic study of the Anthropocene
Still, this book can surprise even skeptics. It feels like fiction, thinks like philosophy, and moves like memoir.
Final Verdict
Emotional resonance: ★★★★★
Intellectual rigor: ★★★★☆
Literary quality: ★★★★★
Relevance to today: ★★★★★
Re-read value: ★★★★☆
Average rating?
5 stars. Without irony. Without hesitation.
Because The Anthropocene Reviewed is not just a book about reviewing—it’s a masterclass in how to live meaningfully in an age of collapse.
If you’ve ever cried over a sunset, reviewed a pizza place on Google, or tried to hold onto hope when the world felt impossibly heavy—this book is for you.
John Green doesn’t just ask us to observe the Anthropocene.
He dares us to love it.
