Preface Dipesh Chakrabarty; Introduction: The growing anthropocene consensus Julia Adeney Thomas; Part I. Strata and Stories: 1. Science: Old and new patterns of the anthropocene Jan Zalasiewicz; 2. Humanities and social sciences: Human stories and the anthropocene earth system Julia Adeney Thomas; Part II. One Anthropocene: Many Stories: 3. Earth system science: Gravity, the earth system and the anthropocene Will Steffen; 4. Deep History and disease: Germs and humanity's rise to planetary dominance Kyle Harper; 5. Anthropology: Colonialism, indigeneity, and wind power in the anthropocene Cymene Howe and Dominic Boyer; 6. The ascent of the anthropoi: a story Amitav Ghosh; 7. Politics in the anthropocene Manuel Arias-Maldonado; 8. Very recent history and the nuclear anthropocene Kate Brown; 9. Stratigraphy: Finding global markers in a small Canadian lake Francine McCarthy; 10. Curating the anthropocene at Berlin's house of world culture Bernd Scherer; Part III. Future Habitations: 11. Anthropocene ethics, as seen from a Mars mission: a story Clive Hamilton; 12. Mutualistic cities of the near future Mark Williams, Julia Adeney Thomas, Gavin Brown, Minal Pathak, Moya Burns, Will Steffen, John Clarkson and Jan Zalasiewicz; Afterword: Jürgen Renn and Christoph Rosol.