“The Sixth Extinction” by Elizabeth Kolbert – Our Grand Legacy

As virtually every review of human history has pointed it out, before we came to the planet five mass extinctions have occurred, referring to either specific events or short periods of time during which the biodiversity on Earth was very suddenly and drastically lessened.

Perhaps the most famous mass extinction we are all familiar with is that of the dinosaurs, when a stray meteor plunged them to their deaths and leaving the rest of the smaller organisms to develop.

Some are going to argue that at the moment, are actually witnessing a slow type of mass extinction, one that will nevertheless change the face of the Earth more rapidly than we are willing to admit it. In The Sixth Extinction, Elizabeth Kolbert explores that idea with the help of countless specialists from a number of disciplines.

Those people who the author draws her information from include geologists, botanists, marine biologists, amongst other ones... otherwise said, the discussions in this book come from the observations made by reputable agents in their respective fields, and certainly deserve to be given their share of consideration.

This is basically the kind of book which makes extensive use of academic research and peer-reviewed articles, the ones which serve as the foundation blocks for all the knowledge that is currently available in a domain.

And so what precisely are we getting out of this book by Elizabeth Kolbert? To explain it as simply as possible, the entire book is something like a grand expose, one which demonstrates the path of death and disappearance that our flora and fauna have followed over the past decades.

Extinct animals and those who are in danger of following suit are closely-looked at, as well as the peculiar changes and degeneration occurring with our water and vegetation... it is a chronicle of the Earth's slow demise, and perhaps a late wake-up call to those who can hear it.

This book certainly showcases some literature chops rather than just being about facts, being written in a beautiful prose that takes us far below the surface in terms of the implications of this sixth extinction, and perhaps the fact that we are the helm of it, even if we aren't the sole and direct cause of what's happening.

Apart from the very real physical implications of these events, the book also takes the time to look into the moral and psychological repercussions, and truly does showcase some heavy themes, like the idea that we humans have acquired far more power than we know how to use.

The read itself is very engaging and actually makes these real events feel like some sort of a horror novel (if only it was), like some sort of twisted experiment humanity has decided to perform on itself.

And thus, even though The Sixth Extinction touches upon a very real and frightening subject with a lot of interesting information and food for thought, it nevertheless retains the entertaining essence of a novel, and can truly serve as a massive wake-up call to rethink our ways of living and what we have been doing to this planet we are living on.

If you are interested in a scientific outlook on the current mass extinction taking place and still want to have some sort of fun with it, then I definitely recommend you check the book out.

---

Elizabeth Kolbert Elizabeth Kolbert is an American author and journalist whose best-known work to date has been the 2006 book Field Notes from a Catastrophe. She spent four years of her life studying at Yale University, and was later awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to study at the Universitat Hamburg, in Germany.