Life After People

It amuses me the things that grab a kid’s attention. The boy saw an advertisement for ‘Life After People’. This is a television series on the History Channel about what would happen to cities, buildings, and the ‘hardware’ leftover from civilization if mankind were wiped off the face of the earth. [To avoid a morbid theme the program skips over how exactly mankind is eliminated, just that it is.]

We have watched and recorded the first 4 of 10 episodes with new episodes already coming available. Very entertaining, I concede. Well, the guy was smitten hard. So hard, in fact, that he wrote a Life After People book summarizing much of what he saw, plus a few of his own ideas. He told me the other day that he had to get on the computer to do more research on Washington, D.C. to round out one of his chapters.

He wrote the chapters, not robust with verbiage, but he’s got a few sentences per chapter, and added drawings and magazine clippings. Not taking any shortcuts, he also included a table of contents, glossary, and index. Wife Klem pitched in by scanning an advertisement to incorporate as the book’s cover.

He’s a capitalist, observes this proud dad. He was going to write several books and charge $12.99 each. Wife Klem and I teased him that we’d wait to see if we could get it cheaper on Amazon.com. This must have caused him to revise his business plan. Shortly after he asked how he could make it available on Amazon himself.

‘Welcome to Earth. Population: 0.’


(photo of the author holding his book)

(a sneak peek at the contents) [Photos removed by Klem on 7/26/2010.]


“What are you going to do with the money from your book sales,” I asked.

“Buy books. What else,” he said matter of factly. That puts him way ahead of me at eight years old. I’d put it all toward baseball cards and candy.
-klem