Book Review — You Are Here

You Are Here, by Thomas Kostigen

By Haley M. Walker

At times, You Are Here seems like any your standard travel journal, mixing geography, adventure, self-reflection and all the emotions in between. The twist with this book is an added element of horror.

Thomas Kostigen does not traipse off to luxurious or exotic destinations. Instead, he revolves his travels around the world’s greatest environmental problems. Each chapter is dedicated to a different place and the growing issues plaguing it. After reading this, it becomes clear that the scariest monsters are not just in science fiction novels anymore. Today take the name and form of erosion and pollution crawling through the air, water and land.

In Mumbai, India, Kostigen travels from a shantytown to a garbage dump explaining how people live amongst mile-high areas of waste from industrialized nations. I pictured streets lined with tennis shoes, hard drives, computer monitors and other heaps of garbage from countries that craved new things and needed a place to dispose of old, suddenly unwanted toys.

According to Kostigen, 80 percent of electronic waste from the United States is exported to countries like India. He describes how this overwhelming volume of trash has become a permanent part of the existence of these people. Kostigen also explains how people often dispose of the electronic waste by burning the mounds of it, releasing dangerous toxins into the air. Kostigen writes, “It’s wondrous. It’s tragic. It’s our future if we aren’t cautious.”

From Mumbai to the United States, Kostigen scares us with the stark recognition that the environmental changes the world is creating are widespread and serious. He details several other terrifying places: the floating garbage dump twice the size of Texas off the coast of Hawaii, the deforestation in Borneo and the most polluted city in the world, a Chinese where a mask is necessity. Each locale makes the reader wonder how quickly these environmental blunders are going to continue to spread and if they will eventually land in their own backyard.

The element that sets this book apart is the personal connection Kostigen makes between the individual and these seemingly unsolvable problems. Because he immerses himself in the issues and muses on his feelings as anyone would during their travels, it makes these concerns seem relatable. As per the title, Kostigen places readers directly into his non-fiction stories, in hopes of both spreading the horrifying knowledge and hopefully scaring us into action.