Extinctions

From the asteroid strike that wiped out the dinosaurs to today’s climate crisis, understanding extinction events can help us mitigate their impact. This book argues that by changing our destructive tendencies, prioritizing biodiversity conservation, and redefining our role as humans, we can take transformative action and give Earth a chance to heal.

This book provides an interesting overview of mass extinction event, but focuses mainly on the Holocene. I found it a bit disturbing the way the author characterized megafauna extinctions as massacres by humans, when the most we can reasonably say is that humans outcompeted them. Humans aren’t to blame because we’re able to use natural resources more intensively than other species. It’s only in the past 50 years or so that we’ve begun to understand the dangers we present to the natural world. Talking about blame accomplishes nothing.

Humans are part of the ecosystems they live in. Any solutions to preserving species diversity must include addressing human needs and human nature. This book doesn’t go far enough in acknowledging that fact. People aren’t going to change, and it’s naive to suggest that they will.

Thanks, NetGalley, for the ARC I received. This is my honest and voluntary review.

This is a great in-depth look at the major extinction events that have happened in the past as well as what we might learn from them for the future. The End Cretaceous asteroid gets extra attention here and even though I've read other books on it (even T. rex and the Crater of Doom by Walter Alvarez, who started it all with his father), I found this one to be especially good at explaining what happened. But Frankel also looks at more modern extinctions, such as the large megafauna including woolly mammoths and giant cave bears that were most likely hunted into extinction by early hunters. He also goes into quite a lot of detail regarding current global warming trends and how that affects animals and plants. He wraps everything up with some suggestions for governmental policies going forward.

I probably enjoyed the first half of the book more than the second. Even though he said Chapter 3 (post Cretaceous recovery) was "somewhat technical and overly detailed in places" and "suggest[ed] skimming through the parts that appear too academic - except students of the earth sciences, of course," I found it very readable and understandable (even though I'm an informal student of such things). Honestly, I thought the parts about current global warming and modern species extinction rates were a bit more technical and detailed. Mr. Frankel has a good way with his explanations that helped to bring the history and situation alive in a way I've found lacking in other books.

The assessment of current times was somewhat depressing, even though he looks at it all in an almost clinical way. Other reviews have pointed out that humans come in for a lot of criticism at this point, and that's certainly true. I also believe, as Werner Heisenberg said: "... science started from the belief - or should one say, from the illusion? - that we could describe the world, or at least parts of the world, without any reference to ourselves." However, I didn't think Frankel was anywhere near as heavy-handed in this regard as others I've read, and in several places he pointed out that we need space and resources as well as animals and plants. But regardless, this was probably the best book I've read on the topic. 4.5 stars rounded up.