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An Unnatural History
Henry Holt and Co.
February 2014
On Sale: February 11, 2014
336 pages
ISBN: 0805092994
EAN: 9780805092998
Kindle: B00EGJE4G2
Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction
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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