Back to the full ranking
The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History cover

The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History

Elizabeth Kolbert

The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History

The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction. A major book about the future of the world, blending natural history, field reporting and the history of ideas and into a powerful account of the mass extinction happening today. Over the last half a billion years, there have been five mass extinctions of life on earth. Scientists around the world are currently monitoring the sixth, predicted to be the most devastating extinction event since the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs. Elizabeth Kolbert combines brilliant field reporting, the history of ideas and the work of geologists, botanists and marine biologists to tell the gripping stories of a dozen species – including the Panamanian golden frog and the Sumatran rhino – some already gone, others at the point of vanishing. The sixth extinction is likely to be mankind's most lasting legacy and Elizabeth Kolbert's book urgently compels us to rethink the fundamental question of what it means to be human.

Buy this book at Amazon
Publisher
Bloomsbury Publishing
Year
2014
ISBN-13
9781408851234
Genre
Science & Technology
Topics
Mass extinctionBiodiversity lossClimate change