The Sixth Extinction
An Unnatural History
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4,2 • 27 notes
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- 12,99 $
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- 12,99 $
Description de l’éditeur
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.
Avis des utilisateurs
Interesting, informative but possibly too negative of an outlook
This is a great book that provides a lot of detail and explanation related to various animals and their ecological struggles. The idea put forward that implies humans are the catalyst for the extinction of several of these animals pushes me to consider alternative reasons and plausible explanations to why these events are not necessarily a bad thing (not that I believe this gives us the right to continue our devastating behaviour). For example, perhaps it is mother nature’s desire that our actions cause the extinction of a species because that species was weak and needed to go. Species have been coming and going for a long time and maybe our role is to cause them to go so we can prosper. It sounds terrible but it also seems like a plausible reason that it is occurring.