Expanding on her absorbing and groundbreaking three-part series for the New Yorker, journalist Elizabeth Kolbert lets facts rather than polemics tell the story in her new book, Field Notes From A Catastrophe.

Her main thrust is that the Earth is now nearly as warm as it has been at any time in the last 420,000 years and is on the precipice of an unprecedented “climate regime, one with which modern humans have had no prior experience.” An inexorable increase in the world’s average temperature means that butterflies, which typically restrict themselves to well-defined climate zones, are now flitting where they’ve never been found before; that nearly every major glacier in the world is melting rapidly; and that the prescient Dutch are already preparing to let rising oceans reclaim some of their land.

In her most pointed chapter, Kolbert chides the U.S. for refusing to sign on to the Kyoto Accord. In her most upbeat chapter, Kolbert singles out Burlington, Vt., for its impressive energy-saving campaign. In writing that is both clear and unbiased, Kolbert approaches this monumental problem from every angle. And in the end, asks what, if anything, can be done, and how we can save our planet.

Check out a Wired interview with Kolbert here.