The Sixth Extinction was published by Elizabeth Kolbert in 2014 and would go on to earn the author the Pulitzer Prize for Non-Fiction. Inspired by such precursors as Darwin’s Origin of the Species and Rachel Carson’s influential Silent Spring, Kolbert’s book is scientific examination of the nature of the relationship between the short period of time human beings have existed and the impact that arrival has had on the future course of life on the planet. Also like those two books, although the topic is highly scientific and unquestionably academic in nature, the language is directed toward a general readership rather than a small scholarly audience.
The title derives from the author’s premise that the earth has experienced five distinct examples of what is termed a mass extinction in its history and is currently heading toward a sixth. That sixth extinction is on the verge precisely due to human interaction and behavior with other resources and species. One of those species is the golden frog which Kolbert studied in Panama. That trip and what she learned there was the stimulus for further research which eventually coalesced into this book-length study.
The bulk of the book is therefore a (natural) selection of the evidence Kolbert collected which affirms her theory. Among that evidence includes mastodon teeth discovered in the 18th century, the extinction of a large penguin-like creature that once roamed the northern hemisphere, and the mass killings of bats result from exposure to a fatal white fungus.
Inevitably, of course, the premise of a coming extinction is linked to the same science that produces evidence supporting climate change and global warming. What may be most surprising about the near-unanimous praise of The Sixth Extinction, therefore, is that even among reviews in publications generally resistant to claims that humans are directly responsible for climate change, the reception typically ranged from glowing to merely positive. Indeed, the positive reception for a book that is essentially a warning about an ecological disaster of epochal consequences being mostly the fault of the planet’s human inhabitants is almost unprecedented and the lack of any major controversial opposition likely facilitated its path toward winning the Pulitzer.
