Alan Weisman's books have been translated into 34 languages. His most recent is Hope Dies Last, published in 2025 by Dutton. His 2013 book Countdown: Our Last, Best Hope for a Future on Earth? by Little, Brown & Co, won the 2014 Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the 2013 Paris Book Festival Prize for Nonfiction, and was a finalist for the Orion Prize and the Books for a Better Life Award. His 2007 book, The World Without Us (Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press), was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, for the Orion Prize, for the Rachel Carson Award, and for the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize. It was named the Best Nonfiction Book of 2007 by Time Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, and the National Post (Canada); a Best of 2007 Media Pick by Mother Jones Magazine; the #1 Nonfiction Audiobook of 2007 by iTunes; Barnes and Noble's Best Politics & Current Affairs Book of 2007, and winner of the Wenjin Book Prize of the National Library of China. In 2020, Slate named it one of the top 50 nonfiction books of the last 25 years. Alan Weisman's previous books include An Echo In My Blood (Harcourt Brace, Inc., 1999); Gaviotas: A Village to Reinvent the World (Chelsea Green Publishing, 1998); La Frontera: The United States Border With Mexico (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986) and We, Immortals, (Pocket Books, 1979). His articles have appeared in Harper's, The New York Times Magazine, The New York Review of Books, The Atlantic Monthly, The Los Angeles Times Magazine, Orion, Vanity Fair, Wilson Quarterly, Audubon, Mother Jones, Discover, Condé Nast Traveler, The Boston Globe Magazine, and in many anthologies, including Best American Science Writing and Best Buddhist Writing (even though he isn't one). A senior editor and producer for Homelands Productions, his reports have been heard on National Public Radio, Public Radio International, and American Public Media.

Weisman has been a Fulbright Senior Scholar (in Colombia), the John Farrar Fellow in Nonfiction at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, and a contributing editor to the Los Angeles Times Magazine. Among his radio awards shared with his Homelands colleagues are a Robert F. Kennedy Citation, the Harry Chapin/World Hunger Year Award, and Brazil's Prèmio Nacional de Jornalismo Radiofônico. He also received a Four Corners Award for Best Nonfiction Book for La Frontera, a Los Angeles Press Club Award for Best Feature Story, and a Best of the West Award in Journalism. His book Gaviotas was awarded the 1998 Social Inventions Award from the London-based Global Ideas Bank. He has taught writing and journalism at Prescott College, Williams College, La Universidad de los Andes (Bogotá) and at the University of Arizona, where he is Laureate Professor Emeritus of Journalism. He and his wife, sculptor Beckie Kravetz, live in western Massachusetts.