
The Sixth Extinction
An Unnatural History
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Narrated by:
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Anne Twomey
About this listen
A major audiobook 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.
©2013 Elizabeth Kolbert (P)2013 Simon & SchusterListeners also enjoyed...
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- By: Bill McKibben
- Narrated by: Jeff Woodman
- Length: 8 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Reissued on the 10th anniversary of its publication, this classic work on our environmental crisis features a new introduction by the author, reviewing both the progress and ground lost in the fight to save the Earth. This impassioned plea for radical and life-renewing change is today still considered a groundbreaking work in environmental studies. McKibben's argument that the survival of the globe is dependent on a fundamental, philosophical shift in the way we relate to nature is more relevant than ever.
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Excellent.
- By Thomas on 01-29-23
By: Bill McKibben
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The Myth of the Strong Leader
- Political Leadership in the Modern Age
- By: Archie Brown
- Narrated by: Jonathan Cowley
- Length: 17 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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All too frequently leadership is reduced to a simple dichotomy: the strong versus the weak. Yet there are myriad ways to exercise effective political leadership - as well as different ways to fail. We blame our leaders for economic downfalls and praise them for vital social reforms, but rarely do we question what makes some leaders successful while others falter.
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Good book, print is probably better though
- By JCarr 1 on 12-14-17
By: Archie Brown
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When Life Nearly Died
- The Greatest Mass Extinction of All Time
- By: Michael J. Benton
- Narrated by: Julian Elfer
- Length: 11 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Today it is common knowledge that the dinosaurs were wiped out by a meteorite impact 65 million years ago that killed half of all species then living. It is far less widely understood that a much greater catastrophe took place at the end of the Permian period 251 million years ago: at least 90 percent of life on earth was destroyed. When Life Nearly Died documents not only what happened during this gigantic mass extinction, but also the recent renewal of the idea of catastrophism.
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Obscurity to Enlightenment - A Mystery Revealed
- By Dipam on 03-18-21
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Salt On Your Tongue
- Women and the Sea
- By: Charlotte Runcie
- Narrated by: Jessica Hardwick
- Length: 8 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Charlotte Runcie has always felt pulled to the sea, lured by its soothing, calming qualities but also enlivened and inspired by its salty wildness. When she loses her beloved grandmother and becomes pregnant with her first child, she feels its pull even more intensely. In Salt on Your Tongue Charlotte explores what the sea means to us and particularly what it has meant to women through the ages.
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More of a story of a birth than the sea
- By Judith on 01-19-25
By: Charlotte Runcie
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Our Inner Ape
- A Leading Primatologist Explains Why We Are Who We Are
- By: Frans de Waal
- Narrated by: Alan Sklar
- Length: 10 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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We have long attributed man's violent, aggressive, competitive nature to his animal ancestry. But what if we are just as given to cooperation, empathy, and morality by virtue of our genes? What if our behavior actually makes us apes? What kind of apes are we?
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I loved this book
- By Ruth on 06-22-07
By: Frans de Waal
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Age of Ambition
- Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China
- By: Evan Osnos
- Narrated by: Evan Osnos, George Backman
- Length: 16 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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As the Beijing correspondent for The New Yorker, Evan Osnos was on the ground in China for years, witness to profound political, economic, and cultural upheaval. In Age of Ambition, he describes the greatest collision taking place in that country: the clash between the rise of the individual and the Communist Party’s struggle to retain control.
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Come back when you have a warrant!
- By Neuron on 11-06-15
By: Evan Osnos
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The Water Will Come
- Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World
- By: Jeff Goodell
- Narrated by: Ian Ferguson
- Length: 9 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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What if Atlantis wasn't a myth but an early precursor to a new age of great flooding? Across the globe, scientists and civilians alike are noticing rapidly rising sea levels and higher and higher tides pushing more water directly into the places we live, from our most vibrant, historic cities to our last remaining traditional coastal villages. With each crack in the great ice sheets of the Arctic and Antarctica and each tick upward of Earth's thermometer, we are moving closer to the brink of broad disaster.
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Well-intentioned but amateurish
- By R. P. on 10-10-19
By: Jeff Goodell
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The Tangled Tree
- A Radical New History of Life
- By: David Quammen
- Narrated by: Jacques Roy
- Length: 13 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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In the mid-1970s, scientists began using DNA sequences to reexamine the history of all life. Perhaps the most startling discovery to come out of this new field is horizontal gene transfer (HGT), or the movement of genes across species lines. For instance, we now know that roughly eight percent of the human genome arrived not through traditional inheritance from directly ancestral forms, but sideways by viral infection - a type of HGT. In The Tangled Tree David Quammen chronicles these discoveries through the lives of the researchers who made them.
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Very Enjoyable and Readable
- By Dennis on 08-18-18
By: David Quammen
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The Uninhabitable Earth
- Life After Warming
- By: David Wallace-Wells
- Narrated by: David Wallace-Wells
- Length: 9 hrs
- Unabridged
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An "epoch-defining book" (The Guardian) and "this generation’s Silent Spring" (The Washington Post), The Uninhabitable Earth is both a travelogue of the near future and a meditation on how that future will look to those living through it - the ways that warming promises to transform global politics, the meaning of technology and nature in the modern world, the sustainability of capitalism and the trajectory of human progress. The Uninhabitable Earth is also an impassioned call to action.
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Don’t read if you have depressive tendencies.
- By Ricky on 03-17-19
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After the Dinosaurs
- The Age of Mammals (Life of the Past Series)
- By: Donald R. Prothero
- Narrated by: Will Tulin
- Length: 10 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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The fascinating group of animals called dinosaurs became extinct some 65 million years ago (except for their feathered descendants). In their place evolved an enormous variety of land creatures, especially mammals, which in their way were every bit as remarkable as their Mesozoic cousins. The Age of Mammals, the Cenozoic Era, has never had its Jurassic Park, but it was an amazing time in earth's history, populated by a wonderful assortment of bizarre animals. The rapid evolution of thousands of species of mammals brought forth many incredible creatures—including our own ancestors.
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Mammals are immersed in minutia.
- By Bertha Watkins on 04-01-24
I've read the other reviews that bashed the narrator, but I found she did a fine job. Maybe not the best for an entertainment book, but good enough for science based book.
Give this one a listen if you have any curiosity as to the impact of the human race on the planet, but prepare to be unhappy as to the final judgement.
Very educational, but not very uplifting
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The performance was good but perhaps the selection of of performer was not the most ideal.
Still very good
Definitely recommend
Inspiring
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Fascinating
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Favorite audiobook so far!!
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Eye opening
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Be afraid, in order to be Alive. Read/Hear this amazingly well written story.
Warning information you are about to receive is Shocking
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Super interesting explanation of how we are changing our planet
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Very eye opening
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To some listeners, this story is tiresome. It is considered tiresome because the future seems far away. Species have become extinct ever since science began to understand evolution. The story of extinction offers no sense of urgency. Numerous futurists dwell on the extinction of wildlife that is either part of the natural order of existence, a cataclysm of human-caused origin, or part of “God’s” plan. Some believe science will provide an escape hatch for human beings to avoid extinction. History and Kolbert’s book suggest a “…Sixth Extinction” is inevitable, regardless of one’s belief.
One may argue this is the fault of human civilization but that is wasted intellectualization. The advance of civilization naturally induces loss of biodiversity. Part of Kolbert’s theme suggests interconnectedness is the proximate cause of loss of biodiversity but it does not have to be the cause for a “…Sixth Extinction”.
Kolbert’s argument reminds one of the Serenity Prayer:
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.
“The Sixth Extinction” notes that human beings are the only species that shows the capacity to change events to conform to plan. What the world’s people need is the political will to mitigate the causes of human environmental pollution. It is not that “The Sixth Extinction” will not occur but that human beings need not be the proximate cause.
CAPACITY TO CHANGE
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Interesting and informative
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