In her four years of research for "The Sixth Extinction," Kolbert found evidence of past and present extinction events everywhere.
Tellingly, these stories traverse land and sea, from remote Oceania to the author's own backyard. She weaves together the story of biological calamity, from the concept's first articulation in revolutionary France to the front lines of numerous extinctions today. As evidence of our role in the current mass extinction event mounts, Kolbert illuminates this scientific mystery with a mix of history and field reporting. Traversing four continents and animating scientists both living and long dead, Kolbert's narrative can be mesmerizing and awe-inspiring. "The Sixth Extinction" shows us that it might be our fault. We're living through just such a period of precipitous decline now. But so far scientists have discovered only five times when that rate exploded, wiping out life-forms tens of thousands of times faster than normal, over the course of just a few hundred thousand years - a geologic instant. Species disappear at a "background extinction rate" all the time, usually so low that you'd be unlikely to witness one in your lifetime.
In that time, extinction has been relatively rare.
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