And finally....
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The book describes the major mass extinction events - at the end of the Permian; at the end of the Cretaceous; and now.
It was written during a one-year sabbatical and at first it did seem to be a rather superficial product to justify this time out.
The book is padded out with personal memoir.
At times the writing is a bit fictitious too e.g. "when Wegener died...in 1930, the geological establishment heaved a barely disguised sigh of relief".
Possibly this is two books stuck together. The treatment of the current mass extinction - which is the most disturbing - was somehow less satisfactory.
Sometimes the array of facts seemed to be a little too conveniently assembled, and it would benefit from an update where predictions are made of rain forest destruction circa year 2000 etc, but the message of this part of the book is of such importance and is so depressing that it seems almost churlish to write a criticism of the text.
The account of Man's destruction of the fauna of Hawaii is shocking but as an illustration of Man's destructive impact the author could equally have included something of Darwin's dry observational account of the barbaric cruelty inflicted upon the tame animals and birds of the Galapagos.
The book should have ended circa page 270-271 with the forceful polemic "what right do we have to drive other older species into extinction? " but in the end the author could not resist the temptation to finish on an artificially created positive note.
And finally.....
Worth reading.
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