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An Unnatural History
The Sixth Extinction investigates the proposition that human activity is producing a biological crisis comparable in scale—though not necessarily identical in mechanism or duration—to the five major mass extinctions identified in the fossil record. Kolbert develops this case through thirteen chapters, each organized around an emblematic species, extinction mechanism, scientific discovery, or conservation problem. The sequence moves between deep time and contemporary field sites rather than presenting a conventional textbook survey. The early chapters reconstruct the intellectual history of extinction. Georges Cuvier’s study of fossil remains helped establish that species could disappear permanently, overturning assumptions that nature’s inventory was fixed. The great auk illustrates how direct exploitation can eliminate an abundant species, while ammonites and the end-Cretaceous catastrophe introduce sudden planetary disruption and the scientific struggle to recognize it. The book the…
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Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants
Braiding Sweetgrass is a collection of connected nonfiction essays in which Robin Wall Kimmerer brings together botany, personal experience, Potawatomi teachings, environmental history, and reflections on language and ethics. Rather than presenting Indigenous knowledge and Western science as interchangeable, the book explores what each way of knowing can perceive and what may become possible when they enter a respectful conversation. Plants provide the book’s recurring subjects and organizing teachers. Pecans, strawberries, maples, asters, goldenrod, black ash, beans, corn, squash, sweetgrass, and other beings become points of entry into ecology, family history, land use, gratitude, restoration, and responsibility. Scientific explanations are embedded in stories about parenting, teaching, gathering, gardening, field research, and participation in community life. The book gradually expands in scale. Early essays establish creation, gift, attention, and relationship as guiding ideas. Mi…
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