“The greatest danger we face is not technological hubris, but human apathy.”

—Jeff Goodell

Through years of research, acclaimed author and investigative journalist Jeff Goodell has established himself as an expert on climate change and humanity’s fraught relationship with our rapidly changing planet. As energy independence, extreme heat, and global warming become increasingly urgent priorities, Goodell offers vital perspective on how to stem the tide of environmental disaster—and what’s at stake if we fail to act.

In Goodell’s latest book, The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet, the New York Times bestselling journalist investigates an explosive new understanding of heat and the impact that soaring temperatures will have on our lives and on our world. Extreme heat kills more people per year than any other climate disaster and the negative effects—including increased suicide rates, death rates from heart and kidney disease, and spikes in violent crime—touch nearly every human life on the planet.  With the world waking up to the new reality of a warming planet, rising oceans, and an increasingly chaotic climate, it is revealing fault lines in our governments, our politics, our economy, and our values.

The Heat Will Kill You First is about the extreme ways in which our planet is already changing. It is about why spring is coming a few weeks earlier and fall is coming a few weeks later and the impact that will have on everything from our food supply to disease outbreaks. A heatwave, Goodell explains, is a predatory event— one that culls out the most vulnerable people. But that is changing. As heatwaves become more intense and more common, they will become more democratic. “Entertaining and thoroughly researched,” (Former Vice President Al Gore), it will completely change the way you see the world, and despite its urgent themes, is injected with “eternal optimism” (Michael Mann, Presidential Distinguished Professor, University of Pennsylvania and author of The New Climate War) on how to combat one of the most important issues of our time.

As an award-winning journalist who has been at the forefront of environmental journalism for decades, Goodell’s new book may be his most provocative yet, explaining how extreme heat will dramatically change the world as we know it. “Alarming and timely” (The New York Times), mixing the latest scientific insight with on-the-ground storytelling, Goodell tackles the big questions and uncovers how extreme heat is a force beyond anything we have reckoned with before. The Heat Will Kill You First debuted at #6 on The New York Times bestseller list, and was named a Most Anticipated Book by The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Los Angeles Times.

“The Heat Will Kill You First is essential reading for anyone who cares about the future.” 

―Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Sixth Extinction

In a similar vein, Goodell has covered rising ocean levels in The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Reshaping of the Civilized World. Steeped in scientific research and on-the-ground reporting, The Water Will Come is written in the tradition of environmental classics like Silent Spring and The World Without Us. John Green called it “a thriller in which the hero in peril is us.” In her review for The New York Times, Jennifer Senior praised The Water Will Come as “an immersive, mildly gonzo and depressingly well-timed book about the drenching effects of global warming, and a powerful reminder that we can bury our heads in the sand about climate change for only so long before the sand itself disappears.” It was a New York Times Critics’ Top Book of 2017, one of The Washington Post’s 50 Notable Works of Nonfiction in 2017, and one of Booklist’s Top 10 Science Books of 2017. In 2019, Goodell was recognized with the Louis J. Battan Author’s Award from the American Meteorological Society for work on The Water Will Come.

In his previous books Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America’s Energy Future and How to Cool the Planet: Geoengineering and the Audacious Quest to Fix the Earth’s Climate, Goodell has covered the impact of climate change on political, social and economic issues. He is also the author of the New York Times bestseller Our Story: 77 Hours That Tested Our Friendship and Our Faith, and the memoir, Sunnyvale: The Rise and Fall of a Silicon Valley Family.

Goodell is a contributing writer at Rolling Stone where he has covered climate change for more than two decades, and a frequent contributor to The New York Times Magazine and Yale University’s Environment 360. A 2020 Guggenheim Fellow, his work has been recognized by the American Meteorological Society, New America, and the inaugural Covering Climate Change Now Journalism Awards for Feature Writing. He is a Senior Fellow at the Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center and serves on the board of the McHarg Center at the University of Pennsylvania School of Design.

Goodell speaks on extreme heat, sea level rise, geoengineering and climate change, and America’s energy future.

For more information about Jeff Goodell, please visit him on Twitter, his page on Rolling Stone and at jeffgoodellwriter.com/.