The Sixth Extinction

There have been five major extinction events in our planet's history, and Elizabeth Kolbert's disquieting book argues that we're now causing the sixth. Sadly, her powerful message is undermined by the production's languid narration. Anne Twomey reads in a conspiratorial whisper. Kolbert describes how human colonization and climate change are threatening countless species, and her narrative is tied together with the stories of extinct creatures from ammonites and mastodons to the great auk and the recently vanished golden toad. Many of the these stories are told from the viewpoints of research scientists she visited on the front lines. These dispatches from the field add both color and urgency to an audiobook that deserves a better delivery. D.B. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine