The Sixth Extinction: Journeys Among the Lost and Left Behind by Terry Glavin

The world is experiencing massive extinctions unseen in the 65 million years since the end of the Cretaceous period. A problem? Most definitely asserts Glavin who writes with passion about the loss of animals, plants, and human culture, which he documents on his travels to such places as Singapore, Costa Rica, and Russia. Alarms are sounded over loss of diversity, a phenomenon which serves not only as an antidote to blandness, but also provides the gene pool necessary to survive life's calamities. Take the Irish potato famine. The potato crop made a comeback only after an antidote to the disease was found among ancestral varieties of the potato growing in Central and South America. Diversity in human culture is dying out along with languages, stories, intellectual traditions, pharmacopias, songs and sagas. Ironically, in this age of information we are not gaining knowledge with every human generation, but ''losing'' it.

Find in the Library: First Floor QH75 .G583 2007

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