The Sixth Extinction

Elizabeth Kolbert argues that Earth is in the middle of a sixth mass extinction, and that this one is driven by people. She sets today's losses beside the five great die-offs of the geological past, starting with Georges Cuvier's recognition that species can vanish for good and running through the asteroid impact that ended the age of the ammonites and dinosaurs.

The book is built as field reporting. Kolbert travels to the Panamanian rainforest to follow the chytrid fungus killing golden frogs, dives on the Great Barrier Reef and at a volcanic vent off Ischia to watch what ocean acidification does to reef life, and spends time with scientists tracking the Sumatran rhino, the bats of the northeastern United States, and the Neanderthal genome. Along the way she explains how invasive species, habitat fragmentation, warming and rising carbon dioxide each push species toward extinction.

Its thirteen chapters each follow one species or one process, so it reads as a series of connected stories more than a single argument. It won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Science and Technology. It suits general readers who want the science of biodiversity loss without a technical background.