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The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History

Author: Elizabeth Kolbert

Bloomsbury, London, 2014, pp. 336

Kolbert, a former New York Times journalist, sets the current crisis in the context of five mass extinctions over the last half a billion years. She draws on the scientific findings of geologists, botanists and marine biologists to track 12 species which have become extinct, or are on the point of extinction, and raises basic questions about the impact and role of the human species.