New York City, the near future: Mitchell Zukor works on the cutting edge of corporate irresponsibility, and business is booming. A brilliant mathematician, he spends his days calculating worst-case scenarios for FutureWorld, a consulting firm that indemnifies corporations against potential disasters. As Mitchell immerses himself in the calculus of catastrophe, he exchanges letters with Elsa Bruner-a college crush with her own apocalyptic secret-and becomes obsessed by a culture's fears. When Mitchell's darkest predictions come true and an actual worst-case scenario engulfs Manhattan, he realizes that he is uniquely prepared to profit. But what will it cost him?

Odds Against Tomorrow, hailed by Rolling Stone as "the first great climate-change novel," is an all-too-plausible literary thriller, an unexpected love story, and a philosophically searching inquiry into the nature of fear. The future is not what it used to be.

Born in New York City, Nathaniel Rich now lives in New Orleans. He is the author of The Mayor's Tongue. His short fiction has appeared in Vice, McSweeney's, and the American Scholar; his essays in the New York Review of Books, Harper's Magazine, Rolling Stone, and The New York Times Magazine, among other publications.