On Extinction: How We Became Estranged from Nature

In this “strange hybrid of travelogue and natural science” the award-winning author explores extinction with “solid research . . . and truly poetic prose” (New York Times Review of Books).

Award-winning author, poet, and scholar Melanie Challenger saw a link between her own estrangement from nature and the cultural shifts that led to a dramatic rise in extinction. Inspired to uncover how we had become so destructive, Challenger went in search of the stories behind these losses.

From an abandoned mine in England to an Antarctic sea voyage; from a visit to South Georgia’s old whaling stations to a stay among an Inuit community in Canada; and from the Falkland Islands to Manhattan Island and beyond, Challenger uncovers lost species and lost languages, as well as cultures, industries, and communities touched in different ways by extinction.

On each of these peregrinations, Challenger also explores the thoughts of anthropologists, biologists, and philosophers who have come before her. Drawing on their words as well as firsthand accounts and ancestral memory, she traces the mindset that made the 20th century an age of extinction, then proposes a path of redemption rooted in our emotional responses to these disappearances.

On Extinction offers an “erudite and impassioned . . . examination on the way our 21st century world is changing so quickly” (Dallas Morning News).