Book of the week: The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert

(Henry Holt, $28)

“It is not possible to overstate the importance of Elizabeth Kolbert’s book,” said Mary Ellen Hannibal in the San Francisco Chronicle. She isn’t the first writer who’s told us that human activity has so changed Earth’s ecosystem that we’re witnessing mass extinction on a scale not seen since dinosaurs were wiped from the planet some 66 million years ago. But Kolbert has found a way to make this disturbing story riveting. “Her prose is lucid, accessible, and even entertaining,” and by reviewing how scientists learned of the previous five mass extinctions and by traveling the world to report on numerous of today’s vanishing species, she’s made visceral an unfolding tragedy. Surely, her readers “will not be able to sleep” until they’ve done all they can to stem the crisis.

Alas, there will be multiple fronts to such a battle, said Kathryn Schulz in New York magazine. “Back in the day, humans went about exterminating other creatures in straightforward fashion—by slaughtering them one by one.” But the dodo and the mastodon were ancient victims. Today, Kolbert shows us, we’re destroying species by razing habitats, spreading invasive species, poisoning the air and oceans, and dramatically warming the atmosphere. The resulting die-off, according to mainstream estimates, will be 10 to 30 percent of all species. “Remarkably,” though, The Sixth Extinction doesn’t scold us about this. Kolbert instead asks us to stand back in trembling awe of a species that’s curious, innovative, and careless enough to attain sufficient power that it may well destroy its own planet. “Can we also save it?” Our guru declines to say.

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Still, her book represents “a compelling call to action,” said Al Gore in The New York Times. Our species too could vanish from the earth if we don’t change course soon, but “fortunately, history is full of examples of our capacity to overcome even the most difficult challenges whenever a controversy is finally resolved into a choice between what is clearly right and what is clearly wrong.” Kolbert herself appears to be less optimistic, said Margaret Quamme in the Columbus, Ohio, Dispatch. She paints a picture of humanity as a force that can’t help but upset the planet’s ecological balance, destroying life as it does. “It’s a grim prognosis, but somehow this isn’t a grim book.” Kolbert “has a rare ability” to accept the broad movements of geological history, even the chapter that currently seems to be heading toward a dark denouement.