Elizabeth Kolbert
Autore di La sesta estinzione: una storia innaturale
Sull'Autore
Elizabeth Kolbert is a staff writer for The New Yorker. Her series on global warming, The Climate of Man, won the American Association for the Advancement of Science's magazine writing award and a National Academies communications award. She is a two-time National Magazine Award winner. She has mostra altro written several books including Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change and The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, which won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction. (Bowker Author Biography) mostra meno
Fonte dell'immagine: Photo credit: Barry Goldstein
Opere di Elizabeth Kolbert
Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change [Updated Edition 2015] (2015) 164 copie
The Ends of the Earth: An Anthology of the Finest Writing on the Arctic and the Antarctic (2007) — A cura di; Collaboratore — 125 copie
The Arctic 2 copie
Eclipse 1 copia
Opere correlate
Fire Fighters: Stories of Survival from the Front Lines of Firefighting (2002) — Collaboratore — 13 copie
Lost Fish: Anthologies of the Work of the Comte De Lacepede (2009) — Introduzione, alcune edizioni — 13 copie
Etichette
Informazioni generali
- Data di nascita
- 1961
- Sesso
- female
- Nazionalità
- USA
- Attività lavorative
- journalist
- Organizzazioni
- The New York Times
The New Yorker - Premi e riconoscimenti
- Lannan Literary Fellowship (2006)
- Breve biografia
- Elizabeth Kolbert (born 1961) is an American journalist and author and visiting fellow at Williams College. She spent her early childhood in the Bronx, New York; her family then relocated to Larchmont, New York, where she remained until 1979.
After graduating from Mamaroneck High School, Kolbert spent four years studying literature at Yale University. In 1983, she was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to study at the Universität Hamburg, in Germany.
Elizabeth Kolbert started working for The New York Times in 1983. Since 1999, she has been a staff-writer for The New Yorker.
Utenti
Recensioni
I finally got around to reading this book, which combines climate science, natural history with focus on evolution and extinction. I did really like it, she does a nice job of making science accessible.
Each chapter outlines a phenomenon or concept through which it's possible to understand a human-caused factor leading to extinction. e.g.:
- Ocean Acidification, and it's impact on molluscs / corals / etc
- How the way we carve up ecosystems (via roads, forestry, etc) means that species become more climate-sensitive, because they can't move to cooler climates as easily
- How global travel / import / export homogenizes ecosystems, how introduced species fail to take, establish themselves, or take over
- The extinction of the Megadons, huge animals, whose evolutionary advantage has historically been 'no predators' at a certain age, but who produce young slowly, turn out to be enormously sensitive to even a small amount of hunting as a species.
I was impressed at how each chapter built off the others -- there's lots of spots where two or three phenomena are interrelated, and the author does a great job of tying these things together, and explaining enormously complex concepts in an understandable way.
I expected *not* to like this book -- I wasn't sure what it was going to be, thought it would be preachy -- but it's an exploration of beautiful, subtle things in the world, and how a lot of it is dying. It's a tragedy more than a science book.
The whole thing is written in an investigative journalist style, the author writes in the first person a lot and details her meetings with individual people in remote locations, and what they ate for dinner, etc. I found this a little annoying at first, but it kinda becomes endearing. The author plays the role of a curious investigator / curious learner well, and the narration is easy to relate to.… (altro)
- Ocean Acidification, and it's impact on molluscs / corals / etc
- How the way we carve up ecosystems (via roads, forestry, etc) means that species become more climate-sensitive, because they can't move to cooler climates as easily
- How global travel / import / export homogenizes ecosystems, how introduced species fail to take, establish themselves, or take over
- The extinction of the Megadons, huge animals, whose evolutionary advantage has historically been 'no predators' at a certain age, but who produce young slowly, turn out to be enormously sensitive to even a small amount of hunting as a species.
I was impressed at how each chapter built off the others -- there's lots of spots where two or three phenomena are interrelated, and the author does a great job of tying these things together, and explaining enormously complex concepts in an understandable way.
I expected *not* to like this book -- I wasn't sure what it was going to be, thought it would be preachy -- but it's an exploration of beautiful, subtle things in the world, and how a lot of it is dying. It's a tragedy more than a science book.
The whole thing is written in an investigative journalist style, the author writes in the first person a lot and details her meetings with individual people in remote locations, and what they ate for dinner, etc. I found this a little annoying at first, but it kinda becomes endearing. The author plays the role of a curious investigator / curious learner well, and the narration is easy to relate to.… (altro)
A sobering subject handled very well. The author examines different species and each represents challenges that many species are facing. Disease, climate change, habitat loss. She writes in such a way that you can still enjoy the encounters in the changing world and gain a feeling for what we could be losing
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Statistiche
- Opere
- 20
- Opere correlate
- 16
- Utenti
- 5,736
- Popolarità
- #4,302
- Voto
- 4.1
- Recensioni
- 220
- ISBN
- 103
- Lingue
- 15
- Preferito da
- 3
Quotes/notes
"Hope is the pillar that holds up the world" -Pliny the Elder
Go looking for hopeful climate stories and they turn up everywhere. (52)
"The history of climate change is one of compounding injustices." (Mohamed Adow, Power Shift Africa, 68)
"Narratives are socially constructed 'stories' that make sense of events." (Climatic Change, 82)
People who believe in a brighter future are more likely to put in the effort required to achieve it. (82)
All our infrastructure has been built with the climate of the past in mind. (135)… (altro)