Odds Against Tomorrow, Nathaniel Rich
Odds Against Tomorrow, Nathaniel Rich
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Odds Against Tomorrow

Author: Nathaniel Rich

Narrator: Kirby Heyborne

Unabridged: 10 hr 16 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 05/06/2013


Synopsis

New York City, the near future: Mitchell Zukor, a gifted young mathematician, is hired by a mysterious new financial consulting firm, FutureWorld. The business operates out of an empty office in the Empire State Building; Mitchell is employee number two. He is asked to calculate worst-case scenarios in the most intricate detail, and his schemes are sold to corporations to indemnify them against any future disasters. This is the cutting edge of corporate irresponsibility, and business is booming.

As Mitchell immerses himself in the mathematics of catastrophe—ecological collapse, war games, natural disasters—he becomes obsessed by a culture's fears. Yet he also loses touch with his last connection to reality: Elsa Bruner, a friend with her own apocalyptic secret, who has started a commune in Maine. Then, just as Mitchell's predictions reach a nightmarish crescendo, an actual worst-case scenario overtakes Manhattan. Mitchell realizes he is uniquely prepared to profit. But at what cost?

At once an all-too-plausible literary thriller, an unexpected love story, and a philosophically searching inquiry into the nature of fear, Nathaniel Rich's Odds Against Tomorrow poses the ultimate questions of imagination and civilization. The future is not quite what it used to be.

About Nathaniel Rich

Nathaniel Rich is the author of the novel Mayor's Tongue and the critically acclaimed nonfiction title San Francisco Noir. His work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the Paris Review, Vanity Fair, and Rolling Stone, among other publications. Nathaniel lives in New Orleans.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Allan on August 10, 2013

I absolutely loved the first half of this book. Mitchell Zukor is a mathematical genius and a deranged individual whose mind obsesses on disaster scenarios. He gets a job as a futurist. His greedy boss finds he's wonderful at scaring big money types into buying their services so they can plan for di......more

Goodreads review by Cat on November 20, 2013

Tales of climate-catastrophe date back to the nineteenth century, but only a few novels on the subject were published before the 1990s. Recently “Cli-fi” has entered the literary lexicon in keeping with public concerns about climate change and how little is being done about it. Odds Against Tomorrow......more

Goodreads review by Eric on April 17, 2013

Nathaniel Rich's Odds Against Tomorrow, an eerily prescient take on worst-cast scenarios and postdeluvian New York, is like a more humane, optimistic version of Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Mitchell Zukor, a brilliant risk-assessor, makes a fortune providing mathematical proof for society's darkest f......more

Goodreads review by Casey on January 09, 2013

This was a good read. Blows my mind that Rich wrote a Hurricane Sandy novel 5 years before Hurricane Sandy. But, if you think about it, it just goes to show that these storms (catastrophes) shouldn't be catching us off guard. The signs are there in the tidal charts and weather system patterns. A good......more

Goodreads review by Carmijn on May 15, 2022

An eerie exploration of apocalypses. Our main character is obsessed with risks and predicting climate disasters. It critiques the capitalism rooted in our world and how this continues during times of crises. Even though this was really interesting, I found the ending to be quite anticlimactic.......more