Elizabeth Kolbert

The Sixth Extinction (eBook, ePUB)

An Unnatural History

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW'S 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR

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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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Henry Holt and Co.
• Seitenzahl: 336
• Erscheinungstermin: 11. Februar 2014
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9780805099799
• Artikelnr.: 40409562

Autorenporträt

Elizabeth Kolbert is a staff writer at The New Yorker. She is the author of Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change and Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future. She lives in Williamstown, Massachusetts.

Inhaltsangabe

Author's Note xi?
Prologue 1?
I: The Sixth Extinction 4?
II: The Mastodon's Molars 23?
III: The Original Penguin 47 ?
IV: The Luck of the Ammonites 70?
V: Welcome to the Anthropocene 92?
VI: The Sea Around Us 111?
VII: Dropping Acid 125?
VIII: The Forest and the Trees 148?
IX: Islands on Dry Land 173?
X: The New Pangaea 193?
XI: The Rhino Gets an Ultrasound 217?
XII: The Madness Gene 236?
XIII: The Thing with Feathers 259??
Acknowledgments 273?
Notes 277?
Selected Bibliography 293?
Photo/Illustration Credits 305?
Index 307

Rezensionen

A distinctive and eloquent voice of conscience ... In her timely, meticulously researched and well-written book, Kolbert combines scientific analysis and personal narratives to explain it to us. The result is a clear and comprehensive history of earth's previous mass extinctions ... "People change the world," Kolbert writes, and vividly presents the science and history of the current crisis. Her extensive travels in researching this book, and her insightful treatment of both the history and the science all combine to make The Sixth Extinction an invaluable contribution to our understanding of present circumstances, just as the paradigm shift she calls for is sorely needed Al Gore, New York Times