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.
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