Product Information
The destruction of nature as a consequence of modern human lifestyles, industries and agriculture is leading to the Earth's sixth great extinction of species. Current estimates suggest that the rate of extinction is w thousands of times that counted in the fossil record before the emergence of modern man. At the same time, human societies themselves are in a cultural extinction crisis, with experts anticipating that of the world's nearly seven thousand languages as few as ten percent may survive into the next century. Melanie Challenger's extraordinary book is an exploration of how we might live to resist these extinctions and why such disappearances must be of concern to us. Adventurous, curious and passionate about her subject, Challenger takes us on a very personal journey as she tries to restore her own relationship with nature. The narrative unfolds through a series of landscapes haunted by extinction. From the ruined tin mines of Cornwall and the abandoned whaling stations of South Georgia to the Inuit camps of the Arctic and the white heart of Antarctica, she probes the critical relationship between human activities and environmental collapse. This is the first book to weave together the strands of cultural, biological and industrial extinctions into a meditation on the way we live beside nature in the modern world.Product Identifiers
PublisherGranta Books
ISBN-101847081878
ISBN-139781847081872
eBay Product ID (ePID)109205025
Product Key Features
SubjectNatural History: General
LanguageEnglish
TypeTextbook
AuthorMelanie Challenger
Additional Product Features
Date of Publication06/10/2011
Place of PublicationLondon
Spine32mm
GenreNatural History: General
Country of PublicationUnited Kingdom
Author BiographyMelanie Challenger is a freelance writer. She is the author of 'Galatea', her award-winning first collection of poems, and co-author, with Zlata Filipovic, of 'Stolen Voices', a history of twentieth century conflict compiled through war diaries. During her research for 'On Extinction', she was a Fellow of the AHRC Centre for the Evolution of Cultural Diversity at University College London from 2007-2010 and International Fellow at the British Antarctic Survey for International Polar Year 2007-2008. Her work was also a recipient of the British Council Darwin Awards.
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