The Sixth Extinction

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. She lives in Williamstown, Massachusetts, with her husband and children.

出版者:Henry Holt and Co.

作者:Elizabeth Kolbert

页数:336

出版时间:2014-2-11

价格:USD 28.00

装帧:Hardcover

isbn号码:9780805092998

图书标签:科普英文原版古生物Environmental历史自然科学生物Biology

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.

读后感

每个时代都会有自己的经典，而与此同时，某些经典也因其特质，可以超越时代，被人们久久传读。比如在环保领域，《寂静的春天》就是这样的作品。它展示的是20世纪蕾切尔•卡逊对于“春天”不再拥有勃勃生机的忧心忡忡。而这种担忧蔓延至今，则已经变成了更实在的，也更可怖...  

试想一下，寂静的春天没有那么早到来，而是现在才有人提出这样的一个名词；试想一下，如果没有罗马俱乐部，没有绿党，没有增长的极限的存在；试想一下，时间还停留在印第安人和欧洲人之间博弈着到底谁才是真正的土地领主的年代。试想一下，这一切延续到了现在，我们的生态系统...  

近几个星期以来，一篇发表在《自然》杂志上的地质学论文在英国媒体上引起颇多讨论，两位英国科学家西蒙•路易斯(Simon Lewis)和马克•马斯林(Mark Maslin)用各种数据分析了一个以人类为主宰的地质年代：“人类世”(anthropocene)的起点问题，他们的结论是1610年最符合条件...  

用户评价

文风干净利落，适量幽默，不抖机灵，hin不错的nonfiction

201409，和The Box一样都是记者出身的作家积累了大量资料后写的纪实类的书。大量生物学生词，不停查字典。五分之一的书是参考资料。

Enchanting descriptions about the trips and interesting people are the best part. Dying bats in caverns. Snorkeling amid coral reefs. Wading marshes to catch the amphibians.

好喜欢这本。有些还没有被认识到，就已经消失。人类中心，人类世。

读了一个多月终于读完了。虽然如果有时间肯定是一气呵成。欲罢不能，文笔很好。看了一下，翻译版本也不错的。本来是当历史书看的，结果竟是故事书。