WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE
ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW'S 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR
**A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
A NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST
**
A major book about the future of the world, blending intellectual and
natural history and field reporting into a powerful account of the mass
extinction unfolding before our eyes
Over the last half a billion years, there have been five mass
extinctions, when the diversity of life on earth suddenly and
dramatically contracted. Scientists around the world are currently
monitoring the sixth extinction, predicted to be the most devastating
extinction event since the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs.
This time around, the cataclysm is us.
In The Sixth Extinction, two-time winner of the National Magazine
Award and New Yorker writer Elizabeth Kolbert draws on the work of
scores of researchers in half a dozen disciplines, accompanying many of
them into the field: geologists who study deep ocean cores, botanists
who follow the tree line as it climbs up the Andes, marine biologists
who dive off the Great Barrier Reef. She introduces us to a dozen
species, some already gone, others facing extinction, including the
Panamian golden frog, staghorn coral, the great auk, and the Sumatran
rhino.
Through these stories, Kolbert provides a moving account of the
disappearances occurring all around us and traces the evolution of
extinction as concept, from its first articulation by Georges Cuvier in
revolutionary Paris up through the present day. The sixth extinction is
likely to be mankind's most lasting legacy; as Kolbert observes, it
compels us to rethink the fundamental question of what it means to be
human.
